CRL in the News

The Trump administration’s economic response has been a disaster too. They’ve done exactly what we feared from the beginning: bailed out the wealthy and well-connected while leaving worthy small businesses out in the cold. A publicly-traded real-estate trust that owns a Ritz Carlton got $38 million in the initial round of “small business” funding. Meanwhile, the Center for Responsible Lending...

Ellen Harnick, vicepresidenta ejecutiva del Center for Responsible Lending, dijo que los bancos comerciales han dado prioridad a sus clientes actuales y a empresas más acaudaladas al gestionar préstamos, excluyendo a las más pequeñas y a la mayoría de pequeños negocios cuyos propietarios son de minoría étnica.

The average person in North Carolina owes more than $36,000 in student loans and nearly 17% haven't made a payment for 90 days or more. That was before the pandemic hit, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. About 1.2 million people are in student loan debt totaling $44 billion in North Carolina.

This also affects the 24.2 million “underbanked” individuals who keep their money outside traditional banks as well as those dependent on services like payday loans. Lisa Stifler, who leads debt collection work at the Center for Responsible Lending, said that “payday lenders in many states have access to bank accounts and can seize that money as well.”

Economic downturns always give rise to businesses offering loans to those in urgent need — and at a high premium, said Ellen Harnick, an executive vice president at the Center for Responsible Lending. But unlike car-title or payday loans, pawn customers don’t risk falling further into debt if they can’t make a payment.

Congress recently did the right thing by giving Americans suffering under the economic impact of the coronavirus a big break on their mortgage payments. If you've lost your job or seen a drop in your income because of the virus, and your mortgage is backed by the government, you can get up to six months of forbearance on your mortgage...

Complaints about student debt cancellation being regressive doesn’t acknowledge there are very big differences in terms of income and wealth.

With the coronavirus pandemic spreading throughout the United States and crippling the economy, Congress moved quickly to approve a $2 trillion relief bill, which President Donald Trump soon signed. Included in the bill is relief for borrowers of certain types of student loans -- they'll see their interest frozen and payments suspended through at least Sept. 30.

“Lenders who charge extremely high rates don’t have a lot of incentive to care whether customers succeed on their loans or not because they make so much money on interest, they can lose the principal and still make money,” Borné says.

The Center for Responsible Lending is concerned that some federal student loan borrowers will be left out under the draft bill. It applies to those with federally held loans and excludes private loans, as well as some federally guaranteed loans -- likely including some disbursed prior to 2008.