INTEGRITY AND RESPONSIBILITY
Evolving requirements and shrinking targeted geographic zones provide challenges to providing low-interest CDFI lending – but the potential for impact is limitless.
As George Coulombe looked to expand his land-surveying business, he needed to invest in his own equipment.
He secured a low-interest loan through Northwest Minnesota Foundation’s Rapid Response funds which provide exceptionally-low-interest loans to those from underrepresented communities and to business ventures in targeted geographic zones.
“The length of the loan is 42 months. I am planning to pay it off early but the interest rate is 1.5 percent and I’m thinking, maybe I should just put my money away and buy some of the other stuff I need,” George said. “I’ll never get another loan for 1.5 percent.”
George’s venture – Coulombe Consulting – is a poster child for what NMF hopes Rapid Response funds will accomplish. Not only is he growing his own business, but George targets his work toward Native American reservations and small counties. Once on site, he works alongside local crews, teaching them skills that will benefit their local communities.
What is CDFI?
The CDFI program is not new. Since 1996, the Northwest Minnesota Foundation has been a certified CDFI, Community Development Financial Institution, through the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The program provides financing intended to support community revitalization.
What has changed, however, is that the program is much more narrowly focused than it has been in the past. Now, the very specific geographic locations that qualify for CDFI lending have shrunk, and much of NMF’s region is no longer eligible for these funds.
“It has been a struggle over the last couple of years as they have changed the requirements and the boundaries have naturally shifted,” said Sarah Linda, NMF Program Officer. “It’s become much more difficult to be effective as a CDFI.”
Sarah was hired last November to work solely on CDFI lending and compliance. During COVID, the U.S. Department of Treasury created the Rapid Response program, open to certified CDFIs. NMF applied for and was awarded $1 million in Rapid Response funds, to be expended over two years. Sarah’s role is to ensure that the Foundation adheres to CDFI requirements while still getting the money out into the region.
“I would say that 80 to 90 percent of the region was in the CDFI eligible regions in the past,” Sarah said. “Now it’s half that.”
What compounds the difficulties of the CDFI program is that not only do certified CDFIs have to release CDFI-specific lending to people and geographic areas that meet qualifications, but all loan dollars disbursed by NMF must all together meet a certain percentage to meet CDFI guidelines.
“That’s the push and pull of this program and of this certification,” Sarah said. “For many years it was very easy to do an SBA microloan that would have naturally been CDFI-eligible, but now, as the restrictions have raised and the geographies have shrunk, it’s become more difficult. That puts our lending team in a position of telling people, ‘We just can’t take your application right now.’”
While the challenges presented by the CDFI program are real, no one in the lending team questions the impact that the funds could have on the communities and people who qualify for lending.
“NMF is walking through this DEI journey, as we explore what equity and inclusion means to us, how it shows up in and through our work,” said Michael Neusser, Vice President for Operations. “Through CDFI, we have these funds specifically for underrepresented communities. Our mission is to help our region as a whole, to build better lives for everyone in Northwest Minnesota, and there have been populations of this region that historically have been underserved. The opportunities here are important.”
Pursuing his own path
As a young adult with a degree in avionics from Alexandria Technical College, George Coulombe struggled to find work. When his next-door neighbor casually mentioned to his father that he couldn’t find reliable workers for his land-surveying business, George’s dad sent him right over.
George found that he enjoyed the work, but the neighbor’s business unfortunately closed down and George had to find other employment.
In 1973, Beltrami County opened a survey office, and the man that George worked under in his neighbor’s company got the job. Two years later, when funding came through that allowed for additional employment, he reached out to George.
“He called and said, ‘Would you be interested?’ and I was there the following week,” George said.
George worked his way up from a technician, to party chief (a supervisory role), to Land Surveyor-in-Training, and ultimately as county surveyor. He retired in 2008.
“In working for the county for so many years, I am able to help out other counties now because I know what I’m looking for,” he said. “I know what should be there. I know the state laws that apply to the local governments. I can take that knowledge and help these other counties.”
After retiring, George initially worked for other private companies, but didn’t like their approach. He became licensed to work in the Dakotas and Wyoming, and decided to start his own company, focusing much of his work on Native American reservations.
“I didn’t like the way private business was run,” George said. He’d hoped that the private businesses would encourage and support the education and mentorship of local laborers, creating human capital for their own Indigenous lands. That wasn’t the case, and George, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe himself, has a keen interest in sharing his expertise with others.
Helping people is what drives George’s passion for his work. In his career, he has seen numerous cases of property and land disputes between neighbors, and he takes great pride in knowing how to accurately determine property lines to provide answers that can be desperately needed.
“We had an instance where these older people had been living quite peaceably for many years,” he said. “A new neighbor comes in, gets a survey done, and cuts down their hedge of lilac trees and takes down their fence. Well, it’s based off the survey, right? They asked me to take a look at it and the surveyor was wrong; he didn’t do things right.”
In that case, as in countless others like it, George said he turns the information over to the applicable agency or county office and encourages property owners to seek legal advice.
“I put monuments in the ground, and everybody should use them,” he said. “If they’re all using the same ones, everything should be right. If there aren’t any monuments in the ground, there are different ways to still approach the work correctly.”
A lot of research is required to do the job right, and George enjoys digging into decades-old maps and filings.
“What I enjoy the most is the knowledge that I’m helping people,” he said. “I like being able to put things back together in search of historical significance. Some of the monuments we find were set back in the late-1800s and some of them, you can tell, have never been seen since the day they were set.”
