When Kelvin Luster, Senior Vice President/Community Development Director at Home Bank, talks about his work and what the bank is doing to provide more resources for homeowners and renters, he gets right to the point.

“It’s about making us be a good corporate citizen,” says Luster.

Home Bank has definitely proved to be a good corporate citizen in its relationship with People’s Housing Plus (PH+), and it’s blossomed into a strong partnership. Working with PH+’s Director of Stewardship and Community Engagement Erania Ellis and Director of Client Engagement and Education Deneka Desroches, Home Bank and Luster have been able to assist PH+ homeowners, and most recently Home Bank sponsored PH+’s first city-wide housing summit. 

“Our partnership has been extremely beneficial for our homeowners, and it’s extended our stewardship efforts,” says Ellis. “PH+ is about building generational wealth, and a big part of that is helping our families stay in their homes by improving and protecting their assets and ensuring that they can effectively and legally pass that asset on to the next generation.”

Luster, who has been with Home Bank for the past 10 years, was promoted into his current role in 2021, and he used his first year in the new position to meet with various nonprofits and organizations throughout the bank’s footprint, which includes more than 40 locations spread across Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. 

“We met with as many groups as possible and we started by listening,” Luster recalls. “And then we discussed how we could help and what that could look like.” 

As community development director, Luster oversees managing the bank’s community investments in grant programs, CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) service activities that aid low to moderate income families within their service area, and tax credits. He points to the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) of Dallas as being one of the Home Bank’s strongest relationships, which in turn has benefited PH+ homeowners. 

FHLB works exclusively with financial institutions and Home Bank has been a member bank for 30 years, and part of that relationship is Luster and Home Bank helping to administer FHLB grants such as the Heirship Program and the FORTIFIED Roof Program. The Heirship Program provides grants to organizations like PH+ with experience in addressing heirs’ property issues, and that has resulted in PH+ being able to offer workshops on wills and succession planning and for those who qualify, acquiring a written will free of charge. The FORTIFIED Roof Program is only available for low to moderate income homeowners, and intermediary organizations like PH+ can apply on the behalf of the homeowner. 

Ellis took full advantage of the program and to date, PH+ has arranged for more than 30 homeowners to get new FORTIFIED roofs. In fact,  Luster isn’t one to leave money on the table, so when PH+ exhausted its first funding level, Luster expanded it to the maximum of $750,000. 

That’s what makes Home Bank and PH+ such strong partners, because they know the current landscape and they’re working to improve it. Families want to purchase homes, they want to be able to maintain and preserve the assets for the future, and that means using what’s available to make that attainable. 

“It’s a game changer,” Luster says. “When you give someone the opportunity to become a homeowner, but then there are all these barriers. So you give them a way to overcome those barriers and that makes homeownership more possible.”