CRL in the News

The CARES Act provided important temporary relief for student loan borrowers, permitting many with federally held debt to skip payments for 6 months, with borrowers generally given credit towards forgiveness for those payments. The legislation halted collections, though a significant number of borrowers were excluded. However, given the severity of the COVID-19 economic impacts, and the dire circumstances for many student loan borrowers, more comprehensive and long-term student debt relief is required to enable these families to recover.

But the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group that works to end predatory lending practices aimed at low-income communities, said challenges remain. “This is just a new public health crisis and economic crisis that is coming after so many decades and centuries of structural inequality,” said Ashley Harrington, the center’s federal advocacy director and senior counsel.

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 minority and Black communities.

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 that would make them a priority for lenders at the outset of the program," the group notes in a report, updated on May 19. "Based on how the program is structured, we estimate that upwards of 90% of businesses owned by people of

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 interest on a payday loan in Nevada is 652 percent.

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.

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 contracts,” Barkley-Denney said.