CASS LAKE — Leech Lake Financial Services is one of the only nonprofits of its kind serving the Leech Lake Reservation and surrounding areas.
It’s a community development financial institution, administering commercial and consumer loans tied to financial education. So, if you were to get a commercial loan, LLFS would help you set up a business plan, build your credit, get your taxes in order and provide an accountant for your first year.
Its target market extends 25 miles outside the reservation boundaries and includes Bemidji, Grand Rapids, Blackduck and Walker.
“And we serve everyone,” said Rob Aitken, LLFS executive director and Leech Lake band member. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Leech Lake enrolled member. It doesn’t matter what tribe you’re from, whether you’re enrolled or not. We serve everybody in this market.”

Aitken said the top reason people come to LLFS is because they want to buy a house.
“We did financial education and one-on-one. Everybody that worked with us would get pre-qualified for a house,” he said. “And then we’d say, ‘Great, go get a house.’ And then we’d move on to our next client.”
But Aitken said they soon learned there was more to buying a house in the Leech Lake area than building credit. Many clients would get frustrated with the process; with 80% being single moms, Aitken said, they simply did not have the time.
So, LLFS created a specific homeownership coaching course. The first time it was offered, 129 people applied.
Nicoa Wind, 43, finished the homeownership class in December.
“I didn’t even know where to go to or even to start looking for a home or even what that would consist of or how to obtain that,” she said. “And by going to their classes they kind of walk you through, ‘Eventually, your journey is going to entail all of this.’”
Wind said she’s spent so long renting, she wondered if she’d waited too long to buy a home.
“You spend 10-15 years renting and you’re not getting anywhere. And that’s kind of where you’re like, ‘OK, I want something of my own,’” she said. “And having the opportunity with this class I think made it more believable for me to have that goal.”
But the LLFS homeownership course didn’t address the lack of affordable housing in the area, another hurdle for potential homebuyers like Wind.

“[The cost of housing] makes it scary because when you start to look for buying a home, you’re like, ‘Well, can I even afford that?’” she said.
Aitken said because of the Leech Lake area’s limited market, most potential homebuyers have to build.
“And if they have to build it themselves, the way the comparables work in this real estate market is the house is going to cost far more than a bank will actually put a loan on it for,” he said.
Aitken estimated a $350,000 house would appraise for $190,000. But through public partnerships, like using tax-forfeited land from the city of Cass Lake, LLFS can build the same house for about $215,000.
“That’s where the magic comes through with this [Minnesota Housing Finance Agency] grant.”
In December, Minnesota Housing awarded the organization $2.7 million through its workforce housing program to build 15 homes, 12 in and near Cass Lake and three in Deer River.
Aitken said the money will help with down payment assistance and the value gap.
“Our folks are going to be able to get into affordable houses this way,” Aitken said. “But the only way that’s going to happen in our target market is if a nonprofit like ours goes out there and does the work for this.”
'It’s all about breaking generational poverty’
Leech Lake Financial Services’ housing project sets itself apart from others just by its name. Wealth Creation Model stands out from the apartments and development names on the list of Minnesota Housing’s project selections.
That title tells a more complete story of this initiative — it's about more than affordable housing.
LLFS had to do its own market study in 2017 because there was no data specific to the area. The numbers spoke volumes: a poverty rate 15.2% higher than the rest of the country, and an average household income $22,000 less than the rest of the state.
“We’re dealing with a community that doesn’t have a lot of assets,” Aitken said.
That revealed an additional challenge to homebuying: People didn’t know how the process worked. They didn’t know realtors or appraisers or title companies — there aren’t band members in the real estate industry. Aitken said there isn’t an insurance agent on the reservation.
“We’re trying to break that system where a family actually passes along the information that they have, that they learn [about home ownership], to their kids,” he said. “... So that’s the system change that we’re trying to implement here, and it’s all about breaking generational poverty.”
Building up a housing industry is also part of the organization’s plan. Five homes funded by another grant are already under construction, and nine interns from the Leech Lake Tribal College carpentry program are helping build them.
“The ideal situation is we have a tribal college student that enrolls in the carpentry program, they literally worked on their own house, and then they live in that house, and then they create a new business to build houses to fill that 2,000-house gap we need in the immediate 10 years,” Aitken said.
The 2,000-home need was identified by a recent housing study. Aitken said the number will grow closer to 4,000 by 2040 because Leech Lake’s 18- to 30-year-old population is growing 20% faster than the rest of Minnesota.
By tying workforce development into the program, LLFS is addressing other challenges: high unemployment and an underdeveloped economy.
“Our Director of Community Development Randy Finn, you ask him about the economy on Leech Lake he goes, ‘We don’t have any economy. We’ve got a tribal government and people work there, and that’s it,’” Aitken said.

The partnership is also helping contain project costs, keeping the houses affordable. Adding builders to the community will help with long-term affordability, too.
“Our hope here is that I’ll be writing commercial loans for future builders for single family homes,” Aitken said. “One of the things we’ve found out through this whole process is there’s very few builders out there do single family homes. The builders like to build million-dollar homes, and they’re right across the road ... on lakeshore.”
LLFS is using its access to resources as a nonprofit to develop the local workforce, create an affordable housing market and, over time, strengthen the local economy.
Aitken said the hope is to address the value gap enough that other private developers will want to come in and build houses.
Right now, Aitken estimates 25% of Cass Lake residents are homeowners, and 75% are renters. He would like to see that flipped.
“75/25 is more of what a healthier community is, and when I talk about a healthier community, I’m talking about higher graduation rates, lower criminal convictions, lower use of the alcohol dependency programs,” he said.
“... If we flip that, we’re going to start seeing a healthier community and people with assets.”
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