CRL in the News

In 2012, the Stanford Social Innovation Review reported that 60 percent of low-income neighborhoods in California didn’t have a bank in their vicinity. Astoundingly, according to data generated by the Center for Responsible Lending after the 2008 financial crisis, low-income families sometimes paid as much as $2,000 a year for check-cashing services, and Californians have been spending close to half...

“Extensive research has established that Black borrowers and other borrowers of color tend to have more difficulty in student loan repayment than their white peers because of past and ongoing racial discrimination,” Julia Barnard, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, wrote in a policy brief published this summer. “They are also among the communities hit hardest by...

“Rohit Chopra is the consumer watchdog our country needs. He is up to the challenge of protecting people’s wallets from predatory practices, ranging from lending discrimination to COVID relief scams to abusive debt collection practices,” said Graciela Aponte-Diaz, acting federal advocacy director for the Center For Responsible Lending, a pro-regulation non-profit.

Más de 6 millones de familias permanecen en riesgo de perder sus hogares por incumplir los pagos de su hipoteca o alquiler, y aunque la gran parte de los afectados aseguran que han tratado de solicitar ayuda, no la consiguen por lo complicado del proceso, por lo que la Secretaria de Vivienda y Desarrollo Humano, Marcia Fudge, señaló que se...

Larger student debt levels, the racial wealth gap—as well as unequal access to and outcomes within higher education—are other socioeconomic factors that reinforce each other and negatively impact women of color. In 2019, the Center for Responsible lending reported that African American women and Latinas had both the highest average student loan debt balances and were paid 61 and 53...

“If the data that you're putting in is based on historical discrimination,” said Aracely Panameño, director of Latino affairs for the Center for Responsible...

As noted earlier, many major banks offer Bank On accounts. All told, these accounts are available at 40 percent of bank branches nationwide, according to David Rothstein, senior principal at CFE Fund, a nonprofit that leads the Bank On initiative and certifies these accounts. Still, these accounts might not be prominently displayed online, or consumers may get steered toward other...

Notably, the department considered and mentioned the ownership of each of the institutions in its announcement. That hasn’t traditionally been done, said Julia Barnard, a researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, noting that CRL was glad to see individual owners held accountable. But the Biden administration could be doing more to help defrauded students, such as by providing group...

“It highlights the problems that we saw and were talking about all along. It’s another newer, more flashy example of the issues with the program,” said Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. “For us, the problem was not just about who was getting the loans but who wasn’t getting the loans.”

Small-dollar, short-term lenders, unburdened by a federal maximum interest rate, can charge borrowers rates of 400% or more for their loans. But more states are bringing that number down by setting rate caps to curb high-interest lending. Currently, 18 states and Washington, D.C. , have laws that limit short-term loan rates to 36% or lower, according to the Center for...