There are several storefronts in the small strip center across a busy Eastside street from a large pawn shop.
Sharing the block are two low-cost cell service shops, a vape store and an insurance sales office. The fourth is new on the scene, the smell of fresh paint and office furnishings still lingering in the end unit, opened with a mission to help people make good financial decisions.
River City Federal Credit Union recently opened its newest branch, a tidy 1,320-foot store at 325 N. New Braunfels Ave., after closing its space on Augusta Street downtown.
The 13,000-member credit union founded in 1936 was previously known as the San Antonio Telegraph Credit Union. It was renamed River City in 2002 and membership opened to anybody who works, lives, worships or attends school in Bexar County.
As a federally certified Community Development Financial Institution, River City provides credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations.
The credit union offers a full range of banking services, including checking and savings accounts, loans and financial education resources.
Now those services are physically located in a part of town where payday cashing services, pawn shops and predatory lenders seem to outnumber actual banks. Only one other bank branch is located at the busy commercial intersection of North New Braunfels and Canton Street.
“We have been wanting to come to the East Side for some time,” said Mike Sanchez, chief retail officer at River City Credit Union.
Reaching banking deserts
The new location positions the institution closer to its members and customers and the nonprofit groups it has worked with for a long time.
The credit union already serves 826 members who reside in the zip codes closest to the branch, Sanchez said — and hopes to attract more.
At the credit union’s Southwest branch, about 35 to 40 new members a month join the credit union by opening an account, most often a free checking account, he said.
About half of those are people of all ages who are opening an account with a banking institution for the very first time. During that interaction, the credit union also offers a financial assessment that helps the member work toward repairing credit or other goals like buying a house or car.
The credit union also offers financial literacy training through its community service partners in an effort to break the cycle in families that have learned to distrust the banking system.
“We target people that are either non-banked or under-banked,” Sanchez said. “We do get a lot of first-time people that don’t know how to work a debit card and don’t know how to balance a checkbook. So that’s what we’re here for.”
Big Mama’s Safe House, a nonprofit that works to end gun violence and support survivors often refers clients to the credit union.
The organization’s executive director, Rose Williams, said that while gun violence is their focus, the group considers the social determinants of health and the challenges of young people not knowing how to handle money, even to the point of not having learned how to count money.
“Some people think, well, they ought to know better, or they ought to know this, or they ought to know that,” Williams said. “We have to teach them.”
Limited transportation is another problem, she said, so having a branch within walking distance makes a difference.
Expanding to the East Side
River City also has branches in other areas that could be considered banking deserts in San Antonio, including the West and South sides of the city, where a bank might not choose to invest resources if its leaders perceive there’s no potential for profit.
Sanchez acknowledged it can be a challenge to operate in those areas. “But we’re ready for it,” he said.
“We know we’re not going to get high-dollar loans … but if we can get the deposits in, and they can start using us as that deposit service that is good for us, too,” he said. “The more activity they do with us, the relationship is stronger.”
Having a physical presence in the neighborhood also is important for that reason, he said.
A member since 1981, David Buchhorn visited the new branch recently and said he prefers to do his banking in person. “I’m not real big on all the computer stuff — I want to see it and do it, I do it the old way,” he said.
Harris Hardaway had been working as a courier for River City for years before he decided to open an account and refinance a high-interest car loan.
Hardaway grew up on Wyoming Street not far from the new River City branch and remembers when the building with the pawn shop across the street was an H-E-B store.
The new branch is sure to get more customers from the neighborhood and people who before now had to drive downtown, he said. “Because it’s closer.”
