Northpointe Bank believes in the value of building trusted life-long relationships with the communities it serves. One of the ways Northpointe does this is by accessing grant funds from the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) of Indianapolis each spring to provide assistance to low and moderate income borrowers in Kent County. Many homeowners require critical repairs to their homes and often lack the resources needed to complete the repairs. Through a collaboration with Seeds of Promise, a local nonprofit, Northpointe helps administer the FHLBI’s Neighborhood Impact Program to provide grants up to $7,500 to eligible homeowners in the community. These funds are used to restore their homes’ roofs, windows, siding, exterior doors, furnaces and water heaters.
“Seeds of Promise’s partnership with Northpointe Bank has been a real blessing to our residents in the Southtown area,” said Ron Jimmerson, Executive Director and Co-founder of Seeds of Promise. “Most were unaware that this program existed to help them with their home improvements, until the first flyer was developed and distributed to our residents. The Neighborhood Improvement Program has shown that we can slow down the process of Gentrification in our area, by assisting our residents with the needed funds to do the repairs and keep them in their homes.”
In 2019, the partnership helped 22 Kent County homeowners improve their homes, a new Northpointe Bank and Seeds of Promise record. In 7 years of participating with the Neighborhood Impact Program, our partnership has helped 59 vulnerable, local, low- and moderate-income homeowners improve their homes with a total community impact of $435,019.
One homeowner shared, “I had a fire 10 years ago and my roof wasn’t restored property. Water was getting into my dining and living rooms. My roof doesn’t leak anymore and I couldn’t have done it without Northpointe Bank and Seeds of Promise.”
Northpointe would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Seeds of Promise for the work they are doing to empower homeowners in the community. The bank is proud to continue this partnership into 2021 with a donation of $21,000 which will help Seeds of Promise tackle the current waiting list of 86 low- to moderate-income homeowners who need to complete critical health and safety repairs to their homes, and hire a Spanish-speaking employee to help extend the reach and benefits of this program to the Hispanic Community in Kent County. Enabling more homeowners to repair and improve their homes will help the local community to grow and thrive now and in the future. A check presentation will take place at 1:00 pm on Friday, Jan. 22 at the Seeds of Promise office in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
