Americans for Fairness in Lending


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The New York Times

Date: 2008-05-07 Irv Ackelsberg's Letter to the Editor in Response to Lenders Fight Stricter Rules on Mortgages,” front page, April 28: It is not surprising that the same lenders and brokers who brought us

Daily Free Press

Date: 2008-03-19 Survey: Americans financially illiterate: "Self-regulation simply does not work. In fact, it is detrimental to the American dream." - Matthew Goldman, Americans for Fairness in Lending. The responsibility for college students' debt should be placed on students and the credit companies that take advantage of them, said Americans for Fairness in Lending student representative Matthew Goldman in an e-mail. Goldman, a Boston University College of Arts and Sciences junior, said loan companies "love to prey" on college students and said students should be aware of what could leave them with large amounts of debt. Goldman said third-party lenders "attempt to wiggle their way into the hearts and back pockets of vulnerable students," with promotions and give-aways. Though lender education is important, federal regulation of the lending industry is necessary for the economy's well-being, he said. "Self-regulation simply does not work," Goldman said. "In fact, it is detrimental to the American dream."

Boston Globe

Date: 2008-03-16 Jim Campen's letter to the editor in response to Jeff Jacoby's Op-Ed, "How Government Makes Things Worse," published in the Boston Globe, Sunday Edition (full text below): Government (in)action: March 16, 2008 JACOBY'S CLAIM that the current subprime mortgage meltdown is the result of the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed in 1977 and underenforced by the Bush administration, is absurd on its face. In fact, the CRA encourages only responsible lending in low- and moderate-income communities, and banks covered by the law accounted for only 1.6 percent of all subprime mortgage loans in Massachusetts in 2006. The real problem with the CRA is that it has not applied to the out-of-state banks and independent mortgage companies that account for a majority of total lending in the state, including almost all of the subprime lending. Fortunately, our Legislature and governor, guided by the facts on the ground rather than by free-market ideology, decided last fall to extend CRA-like obligations to the licensed mortgage lenders responsible for the bulk of subprime loans in Massachusetts. They recognized that markets require well-designed regulation in order to function efficiently and fairly. JIM CAMPEN Executive Director Americans for Fairness in Lending Boston

CBNNews.com

Date: 2008-03-10 Predatory Lending Preys on the Vulnerable 3/10/2008 Source: By Charlene Israel, CBN News Reporter

NY1 News

Date: 2008-03-06 Report Says Subprime Mortgage Lenders Target Minorities: A new report accuses subprime mortgage lenders of going out of their way to target poor and minority areas, including some New York City neighborhoods. The report was released Thursday by a coalition of research organizations focusing on urban areas. It’s worth noting that the study report looks at 2006 and a lot of changes in lending patterns have happened since.

Associated Press

Date: 2008-03-06 Report: Minorities Hit by Foreclosures: Subprime lenders that went out of business with the industry's collapse targeted minority neighborhoods, leaving them to struggle disproportionately with foreclosures and crumbling home values, according to a new report. (Jim Campen, AFFIL Executive Director, is one of the authors of the report.)

Banker and Tradesman

Date: 2008-03-03 Loan Report Finds ‘Reverse Redlining’ in Hub March 3, 2008 By Amy Wyeth, Reporter “High-risk” subprime lenders closed far more loans in minority and low-income neighborhoods in 2006 than in majority-white neighborhoods with higher median incomes, according to a report released Thursday by the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance and six other fair lending advocacy groups across the country. “What’s notable about this is that it covers seven cities,” said Jim Campen, a board member of MAHA and co-author of the study, “Paying More for the American Dream.” All 33 lenders studied, or their subprime lending divisions, had gone out of business as of last September, Campen said. The report, which relies on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data that lenders provided to regulators for 2006 – the most recent year available – found that high-risk lenders made 20 percent of all loans in predominantly minority neighborhoods in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Charlotte, N.C., and Rochester, N.Y., that year, compared to 4 percent of all loans in predominantly white neighborhoods in those cities. The subprime lenders studied made 11 percent of all home loans in the cities studied. In Boston, high-risk lenders’ presence was 4.2 times greater in “highly minority” neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods, the report found. MAHA co-produced a “Paying More for the American Dream” report last year with the same coalition, which found that minorities throughout the United States got more than their share of higher-cost, often subprime, loans from the country’s largest lenders. The current report finds that subprime lenders appeared to target minority and low-income neighborhoods. “There’s no question that this is reverse redlining,” Campen said. Redlining is the name given to some lenders’ former practice of refusing to make loans in communities seen as presenting higher risks. The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) attempted to stop the practice by requiring that banks make loans in all communities in which they accept deposits, including lower-income neighborhoods. Regulators grade banks on how well they comply with the law. The non-bank lenders covered in the study “did very targeted marketing” in minority and lower-income neighborhoods, Campen said, through loan offices in the neighborhoods or local mortgage brokers. The lenders, which included Ameriquest, New Century Mortgage Co., Fremont Investment & Loan and WMC Mortgage Co., were not subject to the CRA. But a Massachusetts law passed last November will impose a CRA-like requirement on most non-bank lenders once the state Division of Banks creates the regulation. Campen said Wall Street investors’ willingness to purchase high-priced subprime loans in order to get the investment returns they generated fueled subprime loan production. MAHA Executive Director Tom Callahan said the lenders likely targeted minority and lower-income neighborhoods because residents of those neighborhoods are less likely to have financial education, more likely to be first-generation homebuyers and more reluctant to go to banks. The authors of “Paying More for the American Dream” make several policy recommendations they say will help reverse racial discrimination in lending and keep more people in their homes. The suggested steps include expanding CRA obligations to cover more lenders, expanding enforcement of CRA and fair lending laws, allowing bankruptcy judges to modify loans on a primary residence as part of the bankruptcy process, and expanding data required in HMDA disclosures to include information on underwriting characteristics and loan terms. A U.S. Senate bill that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify loans was defeated March 3, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has promised to try again after the Senate’s March recess, Campen said. A similar proposal passed the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last December.

Oregon Daily Emerald

Date: 2008-02-28 Shopping the Pain Away Students turn to retail therapy to cope with the stresses of life. By Norma Simon, Freelance Reporter

Banker and Tradesman

Date: 2008-02-28 Report: Racial Disparities in

Boston Globe

Date: 2008-02-28 Study finds minorities paid more for loans: An annual report on mortgage lending in Massachusetts finds that black and Latino borrowers were disproportionately the recipients of loans with high interest rates in 2006. Perhaps the more interesting question is what the 2007 report will show. This is the 14th annual report for the council authored by Jim Campen, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It is titled "Changing Patterns," but it reports very little change: Blacks, and to a lesser extent Latinos, remained largely unable in 2006 to borrow money at the same interest rate as whites.

The Las Vegas Sun

Date: 2008-02-20

Fox Business News

Date: 2008-02-14 AFFIL Executive Director Jim Campen interviewed on Fox Business News about why personal responsibility alone won't fix America's credit card problem. Click here to view the segment on YouTube.

New York Times

Date: 2008-02-05 Principles of Fair Lending: Executive Director Jim Campen writes a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times (re: After the Fed), calling for long overdue regulation of the lending industry and endorsement of AFFIL's Principle of Fair Lending.

Banker and Tradesman

Date: 2008-02-05 Lenders File 55 Percent More Petitions to Foreclose By Amy Wyeth Reporter

In These Times

Date: 2008-01-28 Killer Credit: Attack of the $915 billion consumer debt monster: "The issue is how you make credit card loans to people with bad credit, and how you make money off of that," says Jim Campen, executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL). "And the solution is basically, give them a credit card but don't give them credit, and charge them a lot of fees for doing it."

The Lowell Sun

Date: 2008-01-25 Lowell foreclosures tripled in '07: Jim Campen, executive director of the Boston-based consumer-advocacy organization Americans for Fairness in Lending, said there are two primary factors behind the foreclosure trend: --Falling home values. --An increasing tendency of mortgage lenders granting high-interest subprime loans -- those designed for borrowers with poor credit -- to people who could not afford them but were told they could. "A lot of people that are hanging on are not going to be able to hang on any longer," he said.

MSN MoneyBlog: Smart Spending

Date: 2008-01-11 Have a credit horror story? Post it. Eden has also posted links to great articles about credit cards, including "Top 10 tricks of the lending trade" by Americans for Fairness in Lending.

Banker and Tradesman

Date: 2008-01-07 Challenging Markets, Rules Changes Loom: Mortgage Meltdown Fallout to Shape Coming Year; Continued Housing Slump Also Poses Many Problems Struggling housing and lending markets and major changes to laws and regulations affecting mortgage lenders and brokers will make their mark on the Bay State in 2008, shifting the nature of competition and significantly affecting consumers. Consumer advocates are applauding one provision in the new state law that imposes requirements similar to those of the Community Reinvestment Act on non-bank mortgage companies for the first time. The intent is to ensure that lenders make credit available in even-handed fashion throughout the areas they serve. "Not enough attention has been paid to that," said Jim Campen, executive director of Boston-based Americans for Fairness in Lending. "I think it will be important in the coming year."

Albany Times Union

Date: 2008-01-03 Home prices put strain on buyers Some observers link rising foreclosure rates to the so-called exotic mortgages that gained popularity during the period. Those mortgages, frequently used by borrowers with shaky credit histories, often included adjustable rates requiring borrowers to pay more with time. Kirsten Keefe, the Albany-based executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, said it's unclear if people borrowed under exotic mortgages because rising housing costs left them no choice or if housing costs rose dramatically because such mortgages became widely available. "It's the age-old chicken-or-the-egg question," she said.

Albany Times Union

Date: 2008-01-03 Home prices put strain on buyers: Kirsten Keefe, the Albany-based executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, said it's unclear if people borrowed under exotic mortgages because rising housing costs left them no choice or if housing costs rose dramatically because such mortgages became widely available. "It's the age-old chicken-or-the-egg question," she said. But it's clear that home prices pinched many families, both locally and nationally, Keefe said.

Blast Magazine

Date: 2007-12-20 Avoid credit card traps this holiday season: Here are some tips from Americans for Fairness in Lending on credit during the holiday season.

Florida Sun-Sentinel: Consumer Talk

Date: 2007-12-10 It's always Christmastime for lenders, credit card companies: I just watched one of the funniest/scariest holiday videos called "It's always Christmastime for Visa" - one that gently reminds all of us that our gift-giving ways this time of year can cause serious financial damage when we're not careful. The video is posted on the Web site for Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL), a non-profit consumer watchdog group.

Lowell Sun

Date: 2007-12-09 Gloom on home front: People closest to the ongoing mortgage meltdown and foreclosure crisis facing Massachusetts and the nation answer this way: It's very difficult to tell, but the situation is likely to get worse. "We're still in the pretty early stages of it. These loans have brought down the head of Citigroup. They brought down the head of Merrill Lynch. There's tens of billions of dollars at stake. It could easily set the economy into a recession. It's unprecedented. It affects a very large number of people." - Jim Campen, Executive Director

American Prospect

Date: 2007-11-30 Personal Finance Gets Political: Self-help finance guru Suze Orman has had an epiphany: Lending institutions could use some regulation. "The student loan industry is certainly not alone in being

Albany Times Union

Date: 2007-11-29 Examining downside of consumer dream: Documentary that takes dim view of credit card industry to air tonight "It definitely gives a different perspective about the debt crisis," Kirsten Keefe, executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, said Wednesday. "To date, the discussion has been about consumer responsibility. This is a whole different story that needs to be told, about how the credit industry is wooing us into debt and keeping us there with fees."

Wise Bread

Date: 2007-11-18 Early in the subprime lending collapse, Wise Bread posted a report from Americans for Fairness in Lending explaining how the subprime lending boom hurt everyone.

Patriot News

Date: 2007-11-18 Read this, Bubbleboy: Kathleen Day, a former Washington Post reporter now at the Center for Responsible Lending, and Kirsten Keefe, a founding director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, ran one seminar. They discussed proposals that included more disclosures about teaser rates and put-ting an onus on lenders to make sure borrowers can afford a mortgage after a teaser rate resets. Both ideas seem reasonable and not unduly burdensome in a process that already involves a ton of paper work. Congress has considered ideas along those lines

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Date: 2007-11-16 Payday loan offices in Texas to post their fees, APRs: Texans taking out payday loans after Jan. 1 will see the annual percentage rate -- as much as 481 percent -- prominently displayed in posters with 1/2 -inch type at many of the short-term lenders' offices. "The industry puts a positive spin on what they're doing. And if lenders actually operate as it says they operate, we'd have less of a problem. The reality on the ground is much more upsetting." - Jim Campen, Executive Director, AFFIL

San Antonio Express-News

Date: 2007-11-15 Home hopes, money go down drain: Last fall, Lisa Blue fell in love with a model home and the idea of moving from Florida to the lower-priced San Antonio market. But instead of a fresh start, the pursuit of this home would turn into a months-long drain on the Blue family's finances to the tune of about $18,900 -- an estimated $8,900 in lost deposits on the house and money spent on flights to San Antonio to check on the house, along with a $10,000 credit card loan to help with the down payment... Advocacy groups consider taking escrow out of mortgage payments a practice that contributes to foreclosure. "It doesn't mean you don't have to pay it," said Kirsten Keefe, executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending.

WGBH Basic Black

Date: 2007-11-08 Discriminatory Lending: A conversation about racial discrimination in mortgage lending. AFFIL Executive Director Jim Campen interviewed on WGBH Basic Black.

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