CDCU Works to Rebuild New Orleans' 9th Ward
NEW ORLEANS-ASI FCU's initiative to help rebuild the city's upper Ninth Ward, flattened by Hurricane Katrina, received a $300,000 boost from NeighborWorks.
The grant will help the $240-million CDCU provide new housing in the blighted St. Claude's neighborhood of the city's upper Ninth Ward, which was mostly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
The funds will be used by ASI's community development corporation, A Shared Initiative Inc., which acquired 10 condemned homes from the city of New Orleans that it plans to demolish and replace with 11 modular homes, according to Sarah Taylor, director of ASII. The credit union will then offer the neighborhood's low-income low-interest mortgages to buy the properties.
Conflict Forces Director Out At First Community
ALEXANDRIA, Va.-A ruling by NCUA that a director with financial interests in a credit union vendor was in violation of the agency's conflict of interest rule forced the director to resign from the board. NCUA said in legal opinion to First Community FCU, that a director who owned the credit union's indirect loan vendor and brokered insurance deals with the credit union was in violation of the agency's rules.
"He was getting money from every indirect loan that we did," said Cheryl DeBoer, president of the $270-million CU. The director, who DeBoer would not identify, resigned last May, just after NCUA issued its legal opinion. NCUA said the purpose of the conflict of interest rule is to ensure that no officer or director of a CU is influenced in his duties on behalf of the credit union by the potential for personal financial gain. The director owned interest in a company that provides indirect lending services for the CU and in a company that brokers insurance products to the CU.
