FHLBank Indianapolis grant programs help Native American families in Michigan

In the past four years, dozens of Native American households have received thousands of dollars to help them finish critical and minor home repairs, everything from roofs to water heaters. 

The financial help came in the form of grants from the Neighborhood Impact Program (NIP), made readily available to Native Americans thanks to a fruitful partnership between Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) Indianapolis and the Lake Superior Community Development Corporation.

The corporate offices of FHLBank Indianapolis.NIP is an FHLBank program open to the tribe through member financial institutions. That program provides $10,000 to eligible households for eligible repairs, including a new roof, furnace, water heater, water and sewer issues – critical housing issues. The program is part of a broader effort by FHLBank and the nonprofit Lake Superior CDC to promote homeownership and entrepreneurship opportunities of Native American families in Michigan. 

“If you’re on social security, it’s hard to come up with $9,000 for a new roof. It’s really hard to come up with $8,000 for all new windows and new insulation or a new furnace, so it makes a big difference and a big impact on those low-income households,” says Eddy Michael Edwards, executive director of Lake Superior CDC, which was founded by the Keweenaw Bay community, a federally recognized tribe, based out of the L’Anse Indian Reservation in the U.P.  

Edwards knows firsthand that the needs of tribal communities are unique. Meeting those demands requires access to capital, which is often unique too, and involves overcoming barriers.  Finding a knowledgeable lender and supportive outside entities is vital for accessing capital to further Lake Superior CDC’s mission. 

“American Indians, by nature, are not profit-maximizers. From a historical perspective, we don’t have a lot of experience with generational wealth,” Edwards says. “In a non-Indian world, you have stocks, bonds, equity, property, and value that you pass onto your kids. For generations, that didn’t happen in Indian Country, and so it’s an opportunity for American Indians to increase the assets of their family and their self-sufficiency so they can take care of themselves.”

Many banks are unfamiliar with tribal court systems and investment in reservation communities, but Lake Superior CDC has found an especially important and beneficial partner with its membership in the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) Indianapolis.

Headquartered in Indiana, FHLBank Indianapolis is a regional cooperative, which means it is owned by its member banks, credit unions and other financial institutions in Indiana and Michigan. Its district includes both states. The bank is part of the national Federal Home Loan Bank system, which provides access to liquidity to its financial institution members – banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and Community Development Financial Institutions – to ensure funding is available to the communities they serve. 

The FHLBank Indianapolis district is home to 12 federally acknowledged Indian tribes within Michigan that have sovereign governments that exercise jurisdiction over their members and territory. More than 60,000 Indigenous people live in Michigan, and their population is among the youngest and fastest-growing in the country. In the U.P., these include the Bay Mills Chippewa Indian community, Hannahville Potawatomi Indian community, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

“We are always honored to partner with Lake Superior CDC and support their mission to provide access to homeownership and assets for Native tribal communities,” says MaryBeth Wott, senior vice president, Community Investment and Underwriting/Collateral Operations Officer at FHLBank Indianapolis. “Eddy Edwards is a humble leader and his dedication to his community is inspiring.” 

Providing families with the opportunity to take back ownership of land, creating homes and being able to pass on those homes to the next generation is a rewarding and honorable task for Edwards.

 “It’s important for us to stand up on our own two feet and be strong Anishinaabe Indian people,” he says. “It’s my job to help our community of Indian people, particularly in Michigan, to be self-sufficient and increase the assets for their family so they can enjoy the ‘American dream.’”

Eddy Michael Edwards (left), executive director of Lake Superior CDC, congratulates a new homeowner. It’s a dream Edwards hopes the nonprofit can provide to any American Indian in Michigan. He has launched other programs to help realize that dream, including the nonprofit, Native Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). Launched in 2008, CDFI applied for membership in the FHLBank Indianapolis in 2017. 

“When I started this nonprofit, we were looking at the homeownership rate of American Indians in Michigan in the high 50 %, while the rest of America was 70%. We were looking at increasing the homeownership rates for the purpose of increasing their generational assets,” Edwards says. 

Often, traditional banks aren’t comfortable working with tribal governments. This prevents many Native communities from getting access to capital funds for improvement, stifling development and sustainability. 

The membership has been vital in helping Lake Superior CDC to enable its Native American community residents to reach homeownership status, with the help of FHLBank’s Homeownership Opportunity Program (HOP), which provides grants to qualified first-time homebuyers to help with down payment, closing, and housing counseling costs, as well as its Accessibility Modification Program (AMP). The latter provides grants to assist qualified homeowners with the costs of repairs and modifications to make their homes more accessible to them. Last year, Lake Superior CDC provided nine households with Homeownership Initiatives grant funding.

“That was the first program that we accessed, and we’ve been doing that for about four years now,” Edwards says. The HOP program provides down payment and closing cost assistance. The AMP provides accessible accommodations like wheelchair ramps and ADA roll-in showers. 

“When they buy the house, we don’t just give them a mortgage, but we give them the opportunity to have access to these grant programs,” including the Neighborhood Impact Program. 

For low-income households within HUD guidelines, funding for a new furnace, roof, windows, or insulation typically isn’t readily available. 

“For the last four years, we’ve helped 20-30 households every year with accessing this program and getting them the funding and getting those repairs done. It’s a big deal,” Edwards says. 

The next phase in membership, according to Edwards, was using FHLBank Indianapolis’s Community Investment Program, which provides reduced-rate lending for projects such as affordable housing and commercial economic development in qualifying neighborhoods. 

 “It allows us to pledge some of our existing mortgages as collateral to be able to access additional capital to provide more mortgages. We’re trying to leverage our mortgages,” he says.  “That was the biggest thing, as a native CDFI, we were able to access funding from the CDFI Fund for the U.S. Treasury.”

Working to increase accessibility and sustainability for native families is an important cause for Edwards, who is proud to see the nonprofit’s exponential growth, made possible in part by FHLBank. 

Lack of access to capital has exacerbated a sense of dependency on the federal government, says Edwards. 

“What has happened with the intrusion of the United States of America to Indian Country over the last 100 years, is that American Indians, in a large part, have been made dependents on the federal government,” he says. “We were actually called the wards of the federal government on the reservation. We had to learn how to manage our wealth so that we can be sustainable and not waste or lose it because that helps our communities rise out of poverty, dysfunction. All these things that affect us in Indian Country because of all the assimilation and practices against Indian Country for hundreds of years.”

Fortunately, programs offered by FHLBank Indianapolis are helping change that bit by bit.

“We appreciate the FHLBank system for giving us this opportunity to increase the assets and self-sufficiency of our Indian families, and to give the FHLBank the opportunity to invest in Indian country in America – it’s a great thing,” Edwards says.

Sarah Spohn is a Lansing native, but every day finds a new interesting person, place, or thing in towns all over Michigan, leaving her truly smitten with the mitten. She received her degrees in journalism and professional communications and provides coverage for various publications locally, regionally, and nationally — writing stories on small businesses, arts and culture, dining, community, and anything Michigan-made. You can contact her at sarahspohn.news@gmail.com.