BALTIMORE — NCUA grants this year will help 30 credit unions still using paper records buy computers and help move some credit unions still in managers' homes into commercial office space.

Bill Myers, director of the agency's Office of Small Credit Union Initiatives, described some of this year's grants available from the agency's Community Development Loan Fund during his session Thursday at the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions conference in the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel

Also from National Federation Conference:

• NCUA to Retrain Examiners on Small Credit Unions
• NCUA Promises More Scrutiny, Help
• Grant News Kicks Off Confab

The agency announced its most recent grant availability last month.

Myers told the meetings that only 30 federally insured  credit unions across the country still used pens and paper to keep records and the agency had concluded it was worth providing them $7,500 each, along with training, to bring them into the computer age.

Myers also said that the agency was troubled by credit unions which are still run out of private homes, including one that's a $20 million operation.

Myers drew chuckles from the audience describing how he had gone to a credit union to help on a consulting call and the manager answered the door wearing a T-shirt, shorts and fuzzy slippers.

The grant program this year includes grants up to $10,000 to help bring the CU into regular commercial space.

'There are just all kinds of issues of having a credit union in someone's home,” Myers said. “There are issues of access to records, issues of control of the records if the home is sold or if the homeowner dies and someone else takes over the home. All sorts of things.”