CRL in the News

In the midst of the growing economic crisis, communities of color are hit disproportionately hard. These communities, particularly Black communities, are still recovering from previous disasters, like Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 foreclosure crisis. The health disparities that plague these communities coincide with the growing economic threat. Policymakers’ responses to COVID-19 must account for pervasive racial and economic inequality, and must prioritize protection from debt-related abuses.

Many banks also enraged owners at the start by rejecting their applications if they didn’t have multiple accounts including existing loans or lines of credit. And some of the biggest banks in the country took a week or more to start accepting applications. The problems made it more difficult for minority businesses to get loans, according to a report from the Center for Responsible Lending, a research group.

The question of whether to allow tech companies to operate banks is a rare issue in which the banking industry is allied with consumer advocacy organizations. Consumer groups that have expressed concerns about the FDIC’s proposal include the Center for Responsible Lending, the National Consumer Law Center and the Woodstock Institute.

However, one survey found that just 1 in 10 Black or Latinx small business owners received the assistance they requested under the government stimulus package. The Center for Responsible Lending also found that many Black business owners were shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program, the small business loans designed to keep employees on the payroll throughout the pandemic.

“The customer service of the student loan industry has been terrible,” said Whitney Barkley-Denny, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “The recession and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic will worsen the student loan debt crisis.”

"This is just laying bare all of the cracks and issues that were already there in this foundation and that people of color had been experiencing every single day," said Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director and a senior counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.

The Paycheck Protection Program or PPP provides federally-backed forgivable loans to businesses whose revenues may be impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, little of the $659 billion fund has made it to Latino and Black-owned businesses, despite being the communities hit hardest by the crisis. NewsHour Weekend’s Ivette Feliciano reports.

This systemic racism in the credit and wealth-building systems compound the problem, said Ashley Harrington, the federal policy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. For example, in 2012 the Obama administration tightened credit standards for parents to access the PLUS loans, a federal loan program parents can use to pay for their kids’ college. That change meant the government would look at a parent’s credit history in the five years leading up to when they planned to borrow for certain adverse events. Those five years overlapped with the subprime mortgage crisis, which

Listen to an interview with Ellen Harnick on KCBS Radio in San Francisco about the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also offers tips for maintaining and protecting your credit score during the crisis.

Black small-business owners have faced hurdles accessing the Paycheck Protection Program. Here’s how the African-American owners of MahoganyBooks in Washington, D.C., have kept their small business afloat.