Press Releases

We're glad subprime lenders have recognized that their industry needs to be cleaned up with responsible lending practices. Their statement comes in the wake of a reckless lending spree that, for the most part, was entirely legal under current law. The consequence has been a massive loss in homeownership that is setting millions of hard-working families back, and causing economic...

I'm Eric Stein, chief operating officer of Self-Help, a non-profit community development lender, and senior vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending. Thank you for having me here today to talk about bankruptcy solutions that could help prevent the massive home losses occurring today. As a result of loans that never should have been made, 2.2 million families have...

WASHINGTON, DC – April 4, 2007 – National civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the National Council of La Raza, and the Center for Responsible Lending called today for mortgage lenders, loan servicers and loan investors to institute an immediate six-month moratorium on subprime home foreclosures resulting from reckless...

California consumer groups will have plenty to say Monday when the California Senate Banking convenes a hearing to discuss the implosion of the subprime market and its impact on California homeowners and the economy. "Borrowers are losing homes and subprime lenders are closing their doors every day," said Paul Leonard, director of the Oakland-based California office of the Center for...

The devastating reign of "exploding" adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) in the subprime market may soon be over. Today federal banking and credit union regulators proposed to clamp down on these risky loans by requiring depository institutions to do more careful assessments before approving these loans for credit-strapped consumers. Exploding ARMs, which begin with a fixed "teaser" interest rate for two or...

In recent years, lenders making higher-risk, higher-cost "subprime" home loans have flooded the market with dangerous hybrid mortgages, often approved without considering whether the borrower could afford the loan. Today Freddie Mac took a major step for responsible lending by announcing it will no longer buy common types of subprime mortgages that have been pushing millions of homeowners into foreclosure...

Yesterday more than 80 diverse groups representing over 60 million Americans called on federal financial regulators to clarify that high-risk subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) should be subject to the same lending standards as other risky products identified by regulators. Last fall, the regulators issued tougher guidelines for lenders that offer certain "non-traditional" mortgages. The regulatory edict—formally known as "guidance"—failed to...

WASHINGTON, DC –Tomorrow, Martin Eakes, CEO of the Center for Responsible Lending, will testify about rising subprime foreclosures before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. CRL has joined a coalition of civil rights, consumer, labor and community development organizations calling on policymakers to rein in risky lending practices in the loosely regulated mortgage market. Homeownership is the...

Banks want to be exempted from a new federal law protecting military families from predatory lending, but military and consumer advocates are asking the Pentagon to deny such an exemption and protect borrowers from any usurious lending, no matter who is making the loans. A measure protecting troops from predatory lenders was passed by Congress last fall as an amendment...

WASHINGTON, DC – Banks across the nation are taking advantage of the upward trend in debit card use to make high-cost overdraft loans more common and still costlier, according to a study released by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) today. "What banks are calling 'bounce protection' is starting to look more like a 'protection racket,'" said Eric Halperin, director...