CRL in the News

Nearly 300 bills died last week in the Democrat-dominated Nevada Legislature. Outnumbered Republicans were far from the only ones left to mourn the casualties. Progressive activists were flummoxed by a number of bills either heavily amended or scrapped ahead of the first major bill passage deadline. From hiking the minimum wage to regulating “predatory” payday lenders to eliminating cash bail to immigration reform, many advocates have started to feel short-changed by the efforts of Democratic allies in the governor’s mansion and the statehouse. Some blame legislative leadership. Others bemoan

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will unveil debt collection rules in a few weeks, the agency’s director said Wednesday, potentially unleashing a battle over the industry’s tactics and consumers’ rights. The proposal, which would be the first update to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in more than 40 years, will address how often debt collectors can call someone and the industry’s use of emails or text messages, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new director said Wednesday that she plans to use the agency's tools to focus on preventing consumer harm, outlining an agenda that includes rethinking the supervisory...

DURHAM – Karen Turrentine, 66, a former hairdresser, retired in 2004 because she suffers with lupus, scleroderma, and rheumatoid arthritis. Turrentine said she was just getting over a bout of sickness when she was threatened with eviction following an altercation with a neighbor.

One rainy afternoon early in February 2018, a procession of consumer experts and activists made their way to the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington to meet Mick Mulvaney, then the bureau’s acting director. The building — an aging Brutalist layer cake, selected by the bureau’s founders for the aspirational symbolism of its proximity to the White House, one block away — was under renovation, and so each visitor in turn trudged around to a side entrance. Inside the building, Mulvaney had begun another kind of reconstruction, one that would shift the balance of

RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill to increase bounced check fees, and double some loan origination fees, moved forward at the statehouse Tuesday with a boost from House Republican leadership. House Bill 327 would increase the state cap on returned check fees from $25 to $35, raising that fee for the first time in more than 20 years.

According to a recent report by the Center for Responsible Lending, in our County, we have 12 payday stores which annually drain over 2M in fees from consumers, the majority of whom have low incomes, are people of color, and reside in 48197/98. The maxim “it costs more to be poor” has never been more evident than in how payday lenders target financially vulnerable people—a map search shows these 12 stores are concentrated on the east side. In Michigan, payday lenders can charge fees reaching over 340% annual percentage rate (APR) on a two-week loan

At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill about higher education, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina complained about the attention given to problems with for-profit colleges. She said, "To sit here and grind a tired old ax against certain types of institutions you don't like is just disgraceful." But for-profit colleges have a bad reputation for good reason. And in North Carolina, this is no exception.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., has been fighting for more than a decade to ban bank practices such as the overdraft fees that spurred a Wachovia customer's class action lawsuit in 2008. Melanie Garcia's complaint in federal court in Miami accused the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender, which was taken over by Wells Fargo later the same year, of re-ordering her checking account transactions so that the largest were processed first, a maneuver that maximized the number that would exceed her available balance and generate overdraft fees of $35 each. It's a tactic that Maloney and others view as

Payday lenders like tax season. That’s because they know a good number of people will come to them to cash refund checks, and they will collect a nice bounty in fees. A quick Google search finds all sorts of such companies touting how easy they make it for people to get their tax money. It can be tempting for those who don’t have a bank account and are eager to spend that extra cash, but it can also take a huge chunk out of that refund check. Payday lending stores can charge up to 10 percent of the check value, according to personal finance site NerdWallet. For a $1,000 check, that’s a fee of