Community Reinvestment Fund
JBS Hair, Minneapolis, MN
Jacqueline Hamilton may have grown up knowing hard times, but she has never lost faith in the power of hard work.
Ms. Hamilton grew up in a public housing project in the North Side district of Minneapolis. When her mother became ill and her father left, Ms. Hamilton dropped out of high school to care for her mother and her siblings. In time, she earned her high school diploma. Ten years ago, she left her job at an office-cleaning company to pursue her dream of starting her own business—a company that creates handmade wigs from real human hair.
Read more
In the beginning, Ms. Hamilton operated JBS Hair out of her duplex. There were times when she had to use her credit card to support the company, but after a couple of years, her business stabilized and she needed a proper retail space. “We had a lot of walk-in customers,” she recalls, “and some of them were kind of leery of coming up to a home.”
After several banks rejected her applications for a commercial mortgage, Ms. Hamilton was directed to a nonprofit business development agency that advises small businesses. There she learned about Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF).
CRF is a nonprofit established in 1988 to provide capital to low- to moderate-income communities across the United States. The organization does so primarily by operating a secondary market—that is, a financial system by which the right to collect repayments is sold from one group to another—for economic development loans, as well as loans for affordable housing and community facilities.
CRF and the Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development Department provided Ms. Hamilton with an $82,000 loan through the New Markets Tax Credit, and Franklin Bank, a local community bank, supplied an additional $102,000 in financing. The money enabled Ms. Hamilton to purchase a North Side building with two retail spaces and a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.
Today JBS Hair and All-Wigs.com, Ms. Hamilton’s online business, are thriving. Many of her customers are cancer patients. She is aware that her success is an inspiration to her disadvantaged neighborhood. “It gives the community hope,” she says. “I grew up around here and people actually see me just take baby steps into growing. So it’s something they know they can do.”
