CRL in the News
To take her first steps onto the storied yard of her dream school, Bianca Jones didn’t just get the grades and write a strong application; she applied for five different types of financial aid, including a work–study position. She took on additional jobs, but still came up short of what she needed to pay for her Howard University education, so both she and her mother took out loans to make it possible.
In response to the risks posed by the BNPL industry, a push for regulation has also emerged. In March, 77 nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending and the Association for Financial Counseling & Family Education, called on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to implement stronger regulations on buy now, pay later companies. For its part, the CFPB has urged credit reporting bureaus to standardize procedures for reporting consumers’ buy now, pay later transactions.
Very long mortgages are unlikely to become a big thing in the U.S. One of the main obstacles that stands between American consumers and longer mortgages is a set of regulations that emerged after the financial crisis of 2008. Eric Stein, senior vice president at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Inman that in the run-up to the housing bubble there were products known as “affordability mortgages.”
“So at a high level, we sort of know,” said David Silberman, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsible Lending, “but precisely what, what ‘credit history’ means and how it’s scored? Or what ‘types of credit’ means and how it’s scored? That’s all black box.” Nevertheless, there is an entire industry promising easy fixes to improve credit scores, some which work, and some that don’t. Credit scoring companies are aware of most of these strategies, and regularly update their models to account for new types of data and changing consumer behaviors.
In North Carolina, about 1.3 million borrowers have student loans and owe about $48 billion, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.
Women of color have less job security than before the COVID-19 pandemic and are struggling to repay their student loans, according to a new report released by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The U.S. economy added 6.7 million jobs in 2021, but the gains made in the workforce have not been shared equally across genders, the report says.
David Silberman, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsible Lending, said this is part of a bigger problem. “Credit scores very much are reflecting of the history of discrimination in the country,” he said. Silberman, who spent a decade at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and years in the financial services industry, has thought about how algorithms can reflect privilege, or the lack thereof.
“Cancelling $50,000 in student loan debt is the minimum needed to begin addressing the racial wealth gap,” said Jaylon Herbin, policy and outreach manager and student loan lead at the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). “Student debt most negatively impacts those historically marginalized through systemic inequalities that have only continued to grow. President Biden can and should use the authority of executive action to uphold the administration’s commitment to helping communities of color and women, who deserve the ability to build their American dream.”