CRL in the News

As costs for gas and groceries continue to rise, the life-long goal of homeownership that builds family wealth is also at severe risk. And once again, historic racial disparities play a prominent role. It now takes 16 years for renters earning a median income of $58,000 to save for a down payment and closings costs, double that of 2019 when...

A number of consumer advocacy groups opposed the mergers on the same grounds. On Tuesday one of those groups, the Center for Responsible Lending, celebrated the failure of the OppFi deal and said federal regulators should go further. "OppFi drains borrowers dry — financially devastating families and communities along the way and making the lender unfit for our insured banking...

“When we took on the predatory lenders, she stood with us. She didn’t come as a figurehead; she came as a fighter,” said Graciela Aponte-Diaz, vice president of community engagement at the Center for Responsible Lending.

"Over the last seven years, the time to save up that down payment and closing costs has doubled," said Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a research nonprofit that promotes economic opportunity. The report was released by the center's Julian Bond Institute.

The longer people carry education loans, the more often they struggle to reach other financial security milestones, such as owning a home or saving enough for retirement, said Nadine Chabrier, a senior policy counsel at financial research nonprofit the Center for Responsible Lending. “Student loans that constrain wealth-building for 20 or 25 years cannot be called ‘good debt,’” Chabrier said.

Why might cash advance apps cost more than their marketing would lead you to believe? Senior news writer Anna Helhoski talks with Candice Wang, senior researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, about new research on payday advance apps. They discuss how these apps differ from traditional payday lenders (and how they don’t), why users may not recognize them as...

More workers can now use pay advance apps for quick cash to cover expenses between paychecks. The apps may offer no-cost options, but most users end up paying fees that can total hundreds of dollars a year, a new analysis finds. “They are not free in the vast majority of cases,” said Candice Wang, a senior researcher at the Center...

A January report from the Center for Responsible Lending found that OppFi facilitated personal installment loans with up to 195% APR on loans ranging from $500 to $5,000.

For Calhoun at the Center for Responsible Lending, the stakes are clear. An approval would lead to a normalization of three-digit APRs like the one Patrick is struggling with years later with no end in sight. He says it would not only open the floodgates to other fintech lenders that want to become banks — it would also push current...

Decades ago, banks allowed their customers to overdraft their accounts as a courtesy, Pete Smith, a senior researcher for the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending, told The News & Observer in a phone interview. Banking wasn’t as digital as it is today, and customers couldn’t simply open an app to see whether a check had cleared.