The U.S. has already cancelled roughly $100 billion in student debt amid the pandemic

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Shawn Utley | Madison Leader Gazette
“While the current payment pause and interest waiver has helped millions of borrowers… [it] cannot be a substitute for across-the-board student debt cancellation,” Ashley Harrington, a higher education expert at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Yahoo Finance. “And while it is great that the time in suspension counts towards IDR and PSLF, we know that these and other programs are desperately in need of improvement as very few borrowers have actually received relief through them.”

2021 Fair Housing: Restoring HUD Rules and Revenues

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Charlene Crowell | The Chicago Crusader
“Systemic discrimination continues to limit housing opportunity for Black and brown communities and stunts our country’s economic growth,” said Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president with the Center for Responsible Lending.

Black housing wealth equality not likely for decades at best

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Sylvan Lane | The Hill
A wealth gap also persists based on education level, a separate report from the Center for Responsible Lending noted. For those who have a bachelor's degree or higher, the typical white household had $397,000 in wealth, while for Latinos it was $112,700 and for Blacks, it was $72,450. For whites with a high school education or less, household wealth was $105,590.

Biden administration to reinstate fair housing rules vacated by Trump

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Hannah Long | American Banker
The Biden administration is moving to reinstate two key fair housing rules that were rolled back under President Trump, according to notices published this week by the Office of Management and Budget. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is looking to restore a 2013 rule outlining its use of the “disparate impact” legal standard in fair-lending cases and the 2015 “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule meant to guide local jurisdictions on compliance with the Fair Housing Act.

There’s a racial gap in marketing by banks and payday lenders, study finds

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David Lazarus | The Los Angeles Times
“There is clear evidence that payday lenders target people of color,” said Marisabel Torres, director of California policy at the Center for Responsible Lending. She told me her organization is troubled by “any idea that mainstream banks are for white communities, while people who have historically struggled for middle-class security are offered predatory, wealth-stripping products.”

CFPB warns lenders of “tidal wave” of distressed mortgages

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Kimberly Adams | Marketplace
Also, the programs to help people who miss payments are better this time around, said Mike Calhoun, who runs the Center for Responsible Lending. “The good news is that those payments are generally added simply to the end of the loan with no additional fees or interest.”

Minority Entrepreneurs Struggled to Get Small-Business Relief Loans

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Stacy Cowley | The New York Times
“The focus at the outset was on speed, and it came at the expense of equity,” said Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. In the program’s final weeks — it is scheduled to stop taking applications on May 31 — President Biden’s administration has tried to alter its trajectory with rule changes intended to funnel more money toward women- and minority-led businesses, especially those with only a handful of employees.

Biden Highlights Small-Business Help, as Problems Persist With Lending Program

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Stacy Cowley and Jim Tankersley | The New York Times
“We absolutely need those changes,” said Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. In December, Congress made retroactive changes to Paycheck Protection Program loans for farmers that allowed those borrowers to recalculate and increase previously finalized loans.