This month, Mary Ellen Kaluza talks about organizing a neighborhood credit union.
The South Side Federal Community Development Credit Union that was organized for Lake Street and originally had been in a building near Abbott, across the street from Abbott. Abbott bought that property and the credit union had to move. It moved next to Robert’s Shoes. I was a volunteer for that and eventually came to be on the staff.
It was closed, that was during the Reagan years so the National Credit Union Administration got very conservative. Plus it was the savings and loan crisis. I can’t even describe it. So banks and credit unions were closing. That was community-owned and it could have survived if there had been the will on the federal regulator’s part.
Then a group of us got together to organize a new credit union that went into the Arts Bar. That was the Wendell Phillips Community Development Federal Credit Union. We had to include the ‘Community Development Federal Credit Union’ part. The part we wanted was Wendell Phillips, to highlight who our namesake is and why.
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[Wendell Phillips Credit Union] was born because we didn’t have a bank in the neighborhood. We had to go to Seward or the other side of Nicollet or something for banking. We set up tables everywhere and went to churches, just talking about the credit union…People did join because they liked the cooperative. It was local. And you could walk there.
I loved working at Southside because, again, it was people who lived around there: neighbors. You saw them regularly, you got to know them. There was one couple, they were a young couple, they had some kids, and they both worked at McDonald’s…I would see their rent check come through and I knew that that was their payday and they were going to be in later. So I hung on to that check until they made their deposit. I did finally get called to the carpet on that. *laughs*
One thing about Wendel Phillips [Credit Union] is at that time there was a pilot program. It was a matched savings program, an asset-building program. It was still a pilot. We worked with Karen Clark, our rep, and probably Linda Berglund to get matching money from the state to run this program. People who enrolled they saved money, their savings were matched 3 to 1 by the federal funds and the state funds. Those funds could be used to develop assets – buy a home, start a business, or go back to school.
City County [Credit Union] kept that program running so that was great, and it still exists. In Minnesota it’s called FAIM (Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota) and it’s statewide.
