CRL in the News
“This report calls for expanding debt traps and ripping up consumer protections at the state and federal levels," said Scott Astrada, a director for the Center for Responsible Lending. “Consumer protection laws are critical to safeguarding Americans’ wallets. They should be upheld, and this report should be roundly rejected.”
Congress failed to repeal the rule when it had the chance due in part to public support for the regulation, but the Treasury Department’s added push to rescind the rule could give the CFPB under Mulvaney additional cover to do so, Scott Astrada, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Bloomberg Law.
"It's a comprehensive package that seeks to make college more affordable, more accessible, and hold institutions more accountable for the results that they achieve,” explains Ashley Harrington, a special assistant to the president of the Center for Responsible Lending. “And so we think that it's a big, strong step in the right direction."
Today, the Center for Responsible Lending released a new report examining the repayment experiences of borrowers of longer-term payday loans in Colorado. The report is based on focus groups that were conducted in four Colorado cities in September 2017. The full report is worth the read, but here are the key takeaways...
These loans tend to carry much higher APRs than bank or credit union loans, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. They also generally come with high upfront fees and require borrowers to put down what the center calls "a disproportionate percentage of the car's actual value."
"It puts so much responsibility on students and students alone," said Ashley Harrington, a lawyer at the Center for Responsible Lending, "and on no other piece of this puzzle."
“Mulvaney’s decision to halt the CFPB from moving forward on addressing abusive overdraft fee practices will severely impact poor families and communities of color,” said Rebecca Borne, Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending in response.
The Black unemployment rate is almost double the 3.5 percent unemployment rate for whites and 4.6 percent for Hispanics. About eight percent of African-American homeowners lost their properties to foreclosure from 2007 to 2009, according to estimates from the Center for Responsible Lending. Also, only 43 percent of Black people owned homes in 2017, according to an annual report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Center for Responsible Lending and Young Invincibles (which advocates for economic opportunity for young adults) all say this bill provides a practical solution to the student debt crisis and would increase access to college for low-income students.
Ashley Harrington, a policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, served as a member of the negotiated rulemaking committee and said in a statement that the proposed rule "reads more like a roadmap for institutions seeking to abuse students and avoid accountability and transparency rather than a plan to protect students and taxpayers."