San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Immigrant gives needy ‘passport’ to economy
Mission Asset Fund offers loans to boost credit score
After the death of their mother and father, José Quiñonez and his five siblings walked for hours in the dark and crawled through a drainpipe leading from Mexico to California — where they would live with family in San Jose they had never met. It was July 4, 1980.
“I saw the fireworks and I thought it was just like a welcoming committee,” said Quiñonez, half-jokingly, at his cramped office at a Mission District nonprofit he started a decade ago to help underprivileged people gain a financial foothold.
The idea had its roots in those first years in the U.S.
The siblings, ages 7 to 15, were split up among their San Jose relatives, but remained determined to one day reunite under a single roof. With a goal of socking away enough money to make that happen, each child found work selling trinkets, flowers and car seat covers at
the local flea market. When the oldest turned 18, the siblings combined their wages, enough to pay the deposit on a basement rental of their own.
This idea of people coming together to provide financial assistance to those who need it became the core of Quiñonez’s nonprofit, Mission Asset Fund. The nonprofit helps people — particularly immigrants and low-income individuals — who have a tough time getting affordable loans.
The nonprofit puts together groups of six to 12 people, who have agreed to deposit a certain amount of money into a common fund each month. That money is then lent out, one recipient per month, until all members have a turn in the rotation. This type of savings club is called a lending circle.
Although informal lending circles have been around for hundreds of years, as tandas in Latin America and susus in West Africa as a way for family and friends to access funds in a short amount of time, Quiñonez believes there is one major drawback.
Even as participants made payments on time, they weren’t building credit. Without a credit score, immigrants and low-income individuals struggle to get a credit card, complete a rental application or save for something like a business or a child’s education. Quiñonez likens the credit score to a “passport” to the American economy.
That’s where Mission Asset Fund’s lending circles differ from most. The nonprofit has members of a lending circle sign a contract or promissory note to make it official. As participants make monthly payments, Mission Asset Fund reports the activity to national credit bureaus so their credit scores can grow.
Ninety percent of clients who started without a credit score had a score by the end of their first lending circle, and clients who participated in lending circles and financial education classes increased their scores 168 points on average, found a 2013 study from the César E. Chávez Institute at San Francisco State University.
For his work helping others, Quiñonez is one of six finalists for Visionary of the Year, an annual recognition by The Chronicle of Bay Area leaders whose work improves the world.
Over the past decade, Mission Asset Fund has issued close to $10 million in loans and licensed its software to dozens of nonprofits in 20 states. They introduce lending circles to their own communities.
“Helping one another is central to our survival. That’s part of our human condition,” said Quiñonez, who became a U.S. citizen after President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to certain undocumented immigrants in the ’80s. “When we need help we look for help from those around us: our family, friends or colleagues.”
Mission Asset Fund got its start after Levi Strauss & Co. sold its last denim factory in San Francisco in 2007, and the company set aside $1 million from the sale to seed a new organization. Its goal: to help lowincome individuals bolster their financial security. The nonprofit’s board of directors tapped Quiñonez, who was working as policy director at another nonprofit at the time, to develop classes and brochures on managing personal finance.
Mission Asset Fund landed on lending circles as a novel approach.
“That’s conventional wisdom. We needed to be innovative, radical,” Quiñonez said.
Deirel Marquez, 24, joined one of Mission Asset Fund’s lending circles as a college student and a “Dreamer,” a young, undocumented immigrant who was brought across the border illegally from Mexico to California by her parents when she was a child.
In 2016, Marquez needed money to pay the $495 application fee to renew her status in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that protects from deportation certain immigrants who arrived in the country as children.
At the end of the lending circle, Marquez had the money she needed for the fee and had established a credit score. She was able to move out of a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, where she lived with six relatives, into a rental near UC Berkeley, where she is majoring in global studies.
“I didn’t think it was attainable,” Marquez said. But she filled out an application for the unit on a Friday and got the apartment by Monday.
Hearing this, Quiñonez smiled.
“She has confidence,” he said. “She can demand what you and I would, in terms of services, expectations and even rates.
“It’s really important for people to be seen and recognized by financial systems. When that happens, they feel validated, they feel a sense of belonging.” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who nominated the 47-year-old Oakland resident for The Chronicle’s visionary honor, said Quiñonez embodies
her city’s “proud progressive values.”
“José is a visionary because he’s creating access and wealth for those who’ve been overlooked by our traditional financial systems,” she said. “His nonprofit helps the most vulnerable among us by organizing their collective strength to break into mainstream sources of wealth, and bring vitality to all communities.”
Improving people’s financial footing is still central to the goal of Mission Asset Fund. A decade later, though, Quiñonez sees that his community requires more of him in today’s political environment.
The Trump administration announced plans to cut Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2017, ending protections for about 800,000 young immigrants. Those who were already enrolled in the program had just one month to submit their renewal forms to immigration services to remain in the U.S.
Quiñonez and his team mobilized quickly to come up with the application fees for many of those individuals. They phoned donors, bought out priority mail envelopes from post offices around the Bay Area, and increased the fundraising goal as new gifts poured in.
“We knew right away that there was something he was doing that
was catching fire,” said Daniel Lurie, whose nonprofit Tipping Point Community was among the supporters of the Dreamer scholarship fund.
By the end of last year, Mission Asset Fund wrote $4.5 million in small checks for 7,932 immigrants to renew their status. That money funded 1 of 10 Dreamers in California who applied in 2017, including 16 percent of all applicants in the Bay Area, according to the nonprofit.
It’s now working with state Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena (Los Angeles County), to introduce a bill in the Legislature that would channel $1 million from fines and penalties paid by high-interest rate lenders who break California law into supporting nonprofits that provide financial education and coaching services to working families.
Quiñonez wants immigrants, like him, to feel they belong. For his part, that means giving them the tools and resources they need to be successful members of society.
“People’s success is going to be our best testament that America belongs to us as well,” he said.
Melia Russell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: melia.russell @sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meliarobin