Campaign Highlight: Toxic Loans Day of Action

ADVOCATES IN 10 STATE CALL OUT TOXIC LOANS IN DAY OF ACTION

Last week, allies and advocates in 10 states held events outside payday and title loan storefronts, calling out predatory lenders who make more than $10 billion in fees each year by trapping an estimated 12 million consumers in a cycle of debt with annual interest rates near 400 percent.

National People’s Action (NPA) and affiliates in Idaho, Michigan, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Illinois and Nevada dressed in hazmat suits and taped off “toxic” payday loan stores they called deadly to their communities. These community advocates are urging the CFPB to clean up the mess by writing a strong and broad rule to crack down on abusive lending practices. Their actions elevated the issue of predatory consumer lending, helping the general public understand that short-term, high-interest loans are toxic to communities and families.

As the CFPB rulemaking process moves ahead this year, NPA and its partners will continue advocating for real and lasting protections to free consumers from the payday loan debt trap, so they can live better, more economically secure lives.

STOP THE PAYDAY DEBT TRAP IN THE NEWS

KLAS: Local Consumer Activists Protest Payday Loan Companies
A group of people protested the practices of payday loan companies outside of a Money Tree store on Tuesday. They were demonstrating against what many call “unfair” business practices. Currently in Nevada, there isn’t a limit on how much interest a payday loan company can charge, so activists are pushing to change the law…

KSNV: Pay Day Borrowers Protest High Fees Of Short-Term Loans
Activists in Las Vegas took the streets to protest an industry known its sky high fees. At one point or another, the option of a pay-day loan may have seemed pretty attractive to some, but many find the fine print turns a helping hand into a death grip on one’s finances…

STATE HIGHLIGHTS

VIDEO: Candice from Illinois
“They took advantage of me. They knew I needed them. They knew that once I started, I would need them again.”

PHOTOS: Day of Action across the country

VIDEO: Laura from Nevada
“It’s extracting wealth from our community, it’s preying on our most vulnerable.”