CRL in the News

To help consumers put these recent changes into perspective, the Center for Responsible Lending analyzed the average APR for a $300 loan in each state based on a 14-day loan term. Generally, payday lenders levy a “finance charge” for each loan, which includes service fees and interest, so many times consumers don’t always know exactly how much interest they’re paying.

For Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, Biden’s Racial Equity Initiative is “a critical first step by his administration to address injustices that are holding our country back” and “will help to move the nation closer to its ideals and center solutions to discrimination that hinder opportunity, allowing marginalized communities to move closer to equal justice under law.”

Those who stand to benefit most from the Democrat’s proposal include Black and Latino Americans who have historically lacked access to higher education, and are more likely to take on student loan debt and struggle with repayment. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, nearly 85 percent of Black bachelor’s degree recipients carry student debt, compared with 69 percent of white bachelor’s degree recipients.

Trump's Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to help small businesses stay afloat during the COVID-19 crisis, so naturally loans went to his friends and huge companies. We talked to Ashley Harrington of ResponsibleLending.org and the small business owners of 46 Mott, Fan Fan Donuts, Brown Butter, ConBody, and Kato Sake about the ramifications of that corruption.

In keeping with President Biden’s focus on helping minorities and people with low and moderate incomes—groups hit hardest by the coronavirus-induced downturn—financial regulators are expected to emphasize racial equity as they focus on consumer protection and expanding access to financial services.

More than 325 organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), called upon the Biden administration to use its executive authority on its first day to cancel federal student debt. Originally sent this past November, the letter was updated on Jan. 15 with 85 additional signers.

“Bold action on racial justice is needed at the outset, and fully implementing the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as part of a comprehensive racial equity agenda is essential to expanding opportunity for all Americans,” Nikitra Bailey, vice president for Center for Responsible Lending, tells theGrio.

“These are business owners, they should be able to access this program…. there’s a whole section of people who, no one has found them guilty of anything they haven’t been tried in court, yet they can’t access the program”, said Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director for the Center for Responsible Lending.

"Payday lenders not only disproportionately harm people of color, they target communities of color," says Rebecca Borné, a lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. "So the agency is really taking the language of civil rights to do something that's fundamentally inconsistent with the original intent of that language." says Borné. The result, she adds, would be to exacerbate lending discrimination, "cloaking it in this language of civil rights."

Regulators are updating Community Reinvestment Act protections, but will they do it without giveaways to banks? by Paula Melton Redlining may be coming back. The practice of denying loans to people and businesses based on their neighborhood effectively became illegal in the U.S. in 1977 with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law requires deposit-accepting banks to meet the credit needs of all neighborhoods throughout their “assessment area,” the geographical tract in which they do business. Banks are examined using an elaborate process and receive a grade that’s publicly