Third World Living Conditions Afflict Many Rural Areas of U.S. : Housing: At least 7 million people in rural areas of the United States live without toilets, sinks or running water. Experts blame inadequate private financing, budget cutbacks, aging buildings, poverty and isolation.

OWINGSVILLE, Ky. —  Mamie and Earl Pendleton live in a dilapidated trailer that’s often too hot or cold and always too cramped. But life is better than it once was--now that they have indoor plumbing.

It wasn’t long ago that the Pendletons and their three daughters lived in another mobile home where a bucket was their toilet, water was hauled from wells and five of them slept in a bed.

“At times you can get so depressed and downhearted, you can almost lay down and die,” Mamie Pendleton said. “It’s so hard to think about tomorrow because you’re struggling with today. At times I feel fortunate I’ve got what I got. I feel guilty wishing I did have better. I remember what I used to have.”

In a way, the Pendletons reflect the progress made and problems that remain in rural housing. Millions of rural Americans are housed better than they were a decade ago, but millions more are trapped in Third World conditions, unable to afford or find decent shelter.

“You’ve still got 7 (million) or 8 million people living without a toilet, without a sink or running water in this day and age,” said Bob Rapoza, the National Rural Housing Coalition’s legislative director. “You’ve got people living in shacks with no windows. Many of them don’t have a regular stove, they might have jury-rigged wiring. The basic things we take for granted they don’t have.

“The problem isn’t as visible because we don’t have rural areas in big media markets.”

Inadequate private financing, budget cutbacks, aging buildings, poverty and isolation share the blame, according to experts, who say that one consequence is increasing rural homelessness--with some people even living in abandoned school buses or chicken coops.

More rural than urban residents are homeowners. Millions also live in mobile homes, which have contributed to the progress, but they are expensive to maintain and depreciate in value, said Joe Belden of the Housing Assistance Council, which deals with rural low-income housing needs.

“The situation is improving slowly, but there’s still a great, great distance to go,” he said.

A spending and construction explosion from 1970 to 1980 halved the number of rural housing quarters classified as substandard. Still, in 1980 2.1 million rural substandard housing units remained, and some experts say that number probably has increased because of farm troubles and the sagging small-town economy.

Incomplete plumbing is the biggest rural housing problem--1.3 million homes were without it at the start of this decade.

Living without basics can be devastating, said David Lollis, director of the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises.

“People often are so beaten by their circumstances,” he said. “Their health is destroyed. It’s not only difficult to hold a job, it makes it difficult for the kids to stay in school. There’s no place (or) light to study.

“If you’re a young girl with no water in the house to keep clean, it has terrible negative effects on people’s self-esteem,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes them give up or destroy whatever hope they have.”

Areas in the worst shape tend to be the poorest, smallest and most isolated, where Indians, blacks, Latinos, farm workers and impoverished whites live.

A 1986 Agriculture Department report, based largely on 1980 census figures, said substandard rural housing--lacking complete plumbing or having more people than rooms--was heavily concentrated in the southeastern coastal region, southern Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia and parts of New Mexico, Arizona and South Dakota.

But there are problems everywhere.

In New York, substandard homes in rural Long Island can cost $100,000, said Sue Montgomery-Corey of the New York State Rural Housing Coalition.

In Maine, aging housing and rising land costs in vacation and retirement areas have squeezed out low-income residents. In parts of the West, financing is inadequate to replenish or rehabilitate housing.

And in California and Florida, farm workers sometimes live in squalid, dangerous conditions--21 people in one trailer, 11 sharing a cinder-block room with an outdoor toilet.

Factors contributing to housing problems include:

* Inadequate credit: “In rural America, there is not the capital available in the banks and thrifts,” said Frank DeStefano, a staffer on the House subcommittee on housing and community development. Small rural banks are hard-pressed to make farm loans, he said, let alone “lending at the low end of the scale.”

* Budget cuts: The Farmers Home Administration, the lead federal agency providing financing for rural housing, has seen dramatic cutbacks. From fiscal 1979 to 1988, congressional appropriations for rural housing programs dropped from $3.8 billion to $1.8 billion in loans, $423 million to $275.3 million in rental assistance and $51.4 million to $23.8 million in grants, DeStefano said.

“Even at their highest levels, the programs were never meeting the entire demand,” he added.

In January, 1989, the government had more than $1.4 billion in preliminary applications for rental housing, but only $554 million in funding.

* Isolation: The most remote areas often are bypassed because they have no public utilities and people are too scattered.

“Requirements state you have to have basic services nearby,” said John Johnson, executive vice president of a Virginia construction company and secretary of the Council for Rural Housing and Development.

Marlyn Aycock, a government spokesman, explained: “If you’re 25 miles in the woods, there’s no bus service, no jobs, (the buildings) end up being vacant and vandalized and the entire investment goes down the drain.”

* Aging stock: Housing is falling into disrepair faster than it’s being built.

“People in urban areas generally have a choice--living in substandard housing or paying an inordinate amount of rent for something fairly nice,” Johnson said. In rural areas, “even if you wanted to spend $400 to $500 there just is no place to live.”

All of these conditions contribute to growing rural homelessness.

“We don’t have people sleeping on steam grates,” Lollis said. “We have people living in abandoned school buses, abandoned cars and farm sheds.”

In Mamie and Earl Pendleton’s trailer, the front door is secured at night with a log, and a broken back door is covered with a stapled tablecloth.

They can’t afford another place on their joint annual income of less than $4,000. He is a seasonal farm laborer, she works part-time as cashier at a social-service center.

In winter, the Pendletons, their 7-year-old twin girls and 14-year-old daughter haul mattresses into the tiny living room to sleep near the wood stove.

Sometimes, Earl stays awake because, Mamie Pendleton explained, “if the fire goes out, you’re going to freeze.”

But they are grateful because their old trailer was roach-infested, unbearably hot and without water or toilet.

“The nine years were like a nightmare,” the 36-year-old Mamie Pendleton said, wiping away tears.

She has worked to brighten their home with posters, handmade curtains, floral decorations and garage sale odds and ends. “If everything looks drab, they’re going to feel drab,” she explained.

Still, she said, “I would like to have something better for the kids. I would love to have a carpet. It’s hard to get out when you’re labeled poor. (The girls) don’t do as good in school. They don’t have confidence in themselves.”

But she keeps pictures of unicorns on her wall--”my way of never giving up hope,” she said.