CRL in the News

Diane Standaert is with the Center for Responsible Lending. That group has heard from borrowers that title pawn employees often don't offer up details about the length or cost of the loans. Standaert said federal regulators have been working to change that.

Yet banks are very much involved in the lives of the unbankable. They securitize and sell payday loan and car title loan debt. Title loans take the borrower’s car as collateral—when the note comes due the borrower can either re-borrow, pay fees or lose the car. Combined, these two loan types drain over $8 billion a year from consumers, said...

For Wells Fargo to truly fix itself, it needs to step up oversight of all of its businesses, said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington. “The test for the company is whether they can create products that benefits consumers and helps the bottom line,” Calhoun said.

Mike Calhoun, the president of the Center for Responsible Lending, told BuzzFeed News that the record levels of credit card debt shows that financial regulations introduced after the 2008 crisis did not kill the market for consumer lending, as the industry and some government officials believed they would.

“We are concerned with models that result in higher pricing for moderate-income families and worse pricing for small lenders like community banks,” Mr. Calhoun said. The critical issues in any reform of Fannie and Freddie, he added, were “who pays, and how much.”

You may have finally found the perfect automobile. It is the make and model you want, with the right options, and even the right color. Now comes closing the deal on it. If you’re not flush with cash—in other words, you seek a loan—it’s important to know what you’re up against.

On March 28, the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a hearing that examined recent trends in lending and how the current regulatory climate impacts the availability of credit for consumers and small businesses.

Dismantling lending regulations and weakening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would deal a blow to the entire economy, according to Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending.

By attacking vacant, blighted and “zombie” properties, officials report land banks can stave off the effects of those properties on neighbors. In 2009, the Center for Responsible Lending projected that homeowners living near a foreclosed property, on average, would lose $7,200 in property value, and projected a four-year increase in losses to $20,300 per household.

Last year, the CFPB proposed the first comprehensive federal rules to deal with these debt traps that cost consumers $8 billion per year in fees. These rules would require lenders to verify whether borrowers would truly be able to pay back a loan, restrict the ability of balances to spiral out of control, and make it more difficult for lenders...