An Oklahoma City credit union has begun offering its members loans they can use to finance the construction of shelters in what has been a record year for tornado death and destruction across the Midwest and South.
“We’ve got members in all the affected areas. We want to do our part to help make storm shelters financially feasible”, said Larry Shropshire, CEO of Communication Federal Credit Union. “These tornadoes made us realize the necessity of an affordable, convenient shelter program. Many people simply don’t have a shelter or get caught trying to make it to shelter.”
Communication has roughly 52,000 members and $775 million in assets.
The credit union said the loans would be available to home-owning members living in Oklahoma and Kansas and that the interest rates would be fixed at 2.99%.
Communication also indicated it had some flexibility in the program to make sure that families found the loans sufficiently affordable that the shelters got built.
