BREAKTHROUGH IN BROWNSVILLE

On October, 30, 2002, the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College (UTB/TSC) and CARES, the UTB/TSC Center for Civic Engagement, hosted a meeting at the University with Ms. Susan Schmidt Bies and Mr. Ben S. Bernanke of Washington, DC, two of the seven Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank.  Besides the Governors, the following were present at the meeting: Dr. Juliet García, President, UTB/TSC; Armand Mathew, OMI, Director, CARES; Mr. Don Currie, Director, Community Development Corporation of Brownsville (CDCB); members of the Federal Reserve from Dallas; members of the CDCB Board; some fifteen bankers and business leaders from Brownsville and the Upper Rio Grande Valley.  The meeting marked the first time that Federal Reserve Governors had come to the Rio Grande Valley.  They came because Mr. Don Currie’s creative approach to affordable housing had come to their attention and they were here to find out more about it.  

 A bit of history is necessary to understand the significance of this meeting.  In 1974, while Assistant Pastor at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Brownsville, Armand Mathew, OMI, founded the CDCB, a 501(c 3) not-for-profit corporation, to address quality-of-life issues in Brownsville.  At the time, under a new Federal program, block grant monies for community development were beginning to come to municipalities throughout the U.S.  CDCB submitted a proposal to use some of these monies to eliminate some 1500 outdoor privies within the city limits of Brownsville.  After significant philosophical differences between CDCB and members of the administration of the City of Brownsville and members of the Social Justice office at the Catholic Chancery were discussed and overcome, the City of Brownsville accepted the CDCB proposal.

 Under the brilliant direction of Mr. Don Currie, CDCB has grown to be a $25-30 million-dollar-a-year operation dedicated to affordable housing for low income families.  Mr. Currie’s most significant achievement has been the formation of the Brownsville Multi-Bank coalition.  The Multi-Bank provides the funds for loans to low income families and CDCB processes the loans, manages the funds and builds the houses.  As Mr. Lee Kirkpatrick, Multi-Bank representative on the CDCB Board of Directors, stressed at the meeting with the Federal Reserve Governors, these loans are “sound paper and good business or we would have nothing to do with them.  There is very little default.”  The principal reason for a very low default rate is that families taking out the loans have “sweat equity” in the building of the homes.  They have to contribute 65% of the labor. 

 It is precisely this collaboration between low income families, CDCB, a not-for-profit entity, and the Multi-Bank, a for-profit entity, that caught the attention of the Federal Reserve Governors.  As far as can be determined, this partnership is the only one of its kind in the country and has the potential to become a very productive national model for providing housing to low income families.  The hope is that the Federal Reserve Governors will make it happen.

 During the meeting with the Governors, Father Mathew stressed that the partnership is about much more than providing homes for low income families.  More basically and more importantly, it is about various elements in a community coming together and working together to create the conditions necessary for the unimpeded growth and development of human capital.  One of those conditions is a decent and adequate home that makes it possible for families to live in accord with human dignity. 

 One heartwarming anecdote.  At a recent dedication of a number of these new homes in the Southmost area of Brownsville, one of the poorest sections of town, Armand Mathew, OMI, gave the invocation and afterwards was invited by the owners to bless the new homes.  One of the owners was a wife and mother, eight months pregnant, who was still working with her husband and children to provide the “sweat equity.”  With a beaming smile and tears rolling down her cheeks, the lady commented in Spanish to Father Mathew as he walked with her down the street to her new home: “I simply cannot tell you what it means to our family to finally be ready to move into this home.”