NeighborWorks President and CEO Marietta Rodriguez spoke with the National Credit Union Administration on Sept. 15 to help educate credit unions about NeighborWorks and about the potential for future partnerships. "We are very focused on local communities," she explained, and on generating the highest impact.
Rodriguez explained the organization's reach, through more than 240 community development organizations, and highlighted the network's impact in 2019 – counseling and educating more than 166,000 customers, creating more than 26,000 new homeowners – before bringing in organizations who had already forged partnerships, to show what was possible.
"It takes a lot of partnerships and efforts to accomplish the things we want to accomplish on a day-to-day basis," said Roger Nadrchal, CEO of NeighborWorks Northeast Nebraska, whose organization's goal is to provide housing opportunities to individuals and families and to strengthen and revitalize communities. One of those partnerships is with Columbus United Federal Credit Union.
"We have the opportunity to receive referrals for our programs from the credit union," Nadrchal said. "We also provide referrals back when we're working with a credi union client who's buying a home and working on putting their finances together." The organizations support each other, he said.
One area where they work together is with government guaranteed loans, including rural development loans through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's where programs like down payment assistance make a difference. And NeighborWorks subdivision development and rehab-resale programs have afforded a number of opportunities for credit union members.
"We trust the NeighborWorks staff and they trust us," said Brian Christiansen, CEO of Columbus United and president of NeighborWorks Northeast Nebraska's board. "The opportunities have been great from this partnership and it's not one sided." He says the credit union's clientele includes many people who work in manufacturing and are "right in the sweet spot for the NeighborWorks programs."
In Phoenix, Arizona, Trellis, a NeighborWorks organization, has partnered with MariSol Federal Credit Union for down payment assistance and closing cost assistance. The partnership began 10 years ago, when the CEO at MariSol sent a letter to certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to find out who had an interest in working together.
"Trellis responded," said Patricia Garcia-Duarte, president and CEO of Trellis. "It was a very critical time for us because we needed capital for mortgage lending. MariSol credit union was a blessing for us at that time because we were able to partner to do mortgage lending."
Shana Knox, loan manager for MariSol, said the two organizations worked together recently with homebuying classes, with MariSol's Lend a Hand program, meant to assist residents who were struggling to pay off high-cost title loans, and with Paycheck Protection Program funding. Trellis had borrowers in small business community who had reached out to larger lenders but were not getting any response, Knox said. "We happily obliged and said ‘Yes, bring them over. We will help them out.'"
Garcia-Duarte said they also started a new product, called Pay Yourself Mortgage Program, with the credit union. Some of the program participants have used their savings, which were meant to help with home emergencies, to help with the economic effects of COVID-19 on their households.
From Garcia-Duarte's perspective, the partnership with the credit union is win-win. "We're staying true to our missions," she said. "We're both community focused and working together allows us to leverage limited resources. We have common values and goals. Ultimately the community benefits from us working and collaborating together."
Rodriguez said that as organizations consider partnerships and programs that are available, they should also think about what they need. "Just because they're not offering something doesn't mean that they wouldn't be open to a partnership and creating something together. Innovation can happen when credit union and the organization get together to talk about needs and gaps in the community.
Credit union representatives said in a webinar poll that the program gave them information they would use going forward. The hope, said Todd M. Harper, NCUA board member, is that the webinar would "plant the seeds that will grow into credit union efforts to support the creation of new and affordable housing around the country."
09/22/2020
