CRL in the News

The Center for Responsible Lending hosted a discussion panel to address the impact of COVID-19 on various financial sectors as it relates to Black Americans on Monday evening. The virtual town hall, moderated by White House Correspondent and CNN Political Analyst April Ryan, focused primarily on the areas of small businesses, housing and student loans with a particular emphasis on...

Critics of the industry say the loans are designed to trap borrowers into a cycle of debt. Nearly 20 states have capped rates on payday loans, but lawmakers have rejected efforts to cap the high interest loans in the Silver State, where the industry has contributed generously to politicians. The Center for Responsible Lending reports that the typical annualized percentage...

Host Frank Stasio talks about the landscape of student loan debt during COVID-19 and beyond with WUNC education reporter Liz Schlemmer; Rochelle Sparko, director for NC Policy at the Center for Responsible Lending; and Trey Roberts, a first-generation college graduate and co-founder of Raleigh Pride.

A non-profit group called Center for Responsible Lending points to structural flaws in the PPP's initial design as a reason for the discrepancy. According to the organization, people of color are likely to have fewer employees and less revenue than white-owned businesses. "As a result, there were less likely to qualify for larger loans that would yield the higher fees...

The Center for Responsible Lending estimated in April that approximately 95% of black-owned businesses, 91% of Latino-owned businesses, 91% of Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander-owned businesses and 75% of Asian-owned businesses were unlikely to receive a PPP loan through a mainstream bank or credit union.

But the provision is not retroactive, analysts point out, and it remains unclear just how helpful the measure would be with more than 100 million payments already delivered by the IRS. For people who have already had their stimulus payments garnished, “it doesn’t do much,” said Kiran Sidhu, policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.

"You know the Paycheck Protection Program that everyone was so excited about? Then we found out that a lot of black businesses couldn’t get the money. The center for responsible lending estimated that 95 percent of black businesses didn't get money from that first round,” Kearney said.

An additional problem for these owners is that their businesses are more likely to be sole proprietorships, according to Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. "When we're talking about businesses of color, most of them are very small businesses. So they're sole proprietorships or they have less than 10 employees or in fact more likely...

Whitney Barkley-Denney from the Center for Responsible Lending said the federal government can and should force the loan servicers to follow the rules. “They have multimillion dollar contracts with these servicers and, by the way, it’s taxpayer money that’s paying these servicers to properly service student loans and so the Department of Education absolutely has a role in enforcing their...

The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program is mainly lending to existing customers, and many business owners of color lack such relationships. As a result, a recent report by the Center for Responsible Lending found that 95% of black-owned businesses, 91% of Latino-owned businesses and 75% of Asian-owned businesses “stand close to no chance of receiving a PPP loan through a...