A coalition of community reinvestment and consumer organizations asked the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), charged with overseeing consumer protections for national banks, to immediately implement its longstanding, but unenforced, disclosure requirements, advertising standards, and capital requirements for refund anticipation loans. The consumer organizations sent a joint letter on February 4, 2010.
A new searchable database of free tax preparation sites launched by the University of Missouri could help tax filers avoid the high costs of paid preparers and tax refund anticipation loans. Refund anticipation loans, or RALs, are an expensive way to get your projected tax refund—in Illinois, they cost taxpayers $114 million in 2006 alone. Despite that, some borrowers choose RALs to avoid paying up front for tax preparation—preparers just deduct their fees from the loan proceeds.
New foreclosure filings in the Chicago six county region rose 21 percent from 2008 to 2009 despite federal, state, and local programs designed to curb the foreclosure crisis, says a new Woodstock Institute report. During the fourth quarter of 2009, the region saw 24,053 new foreclosure filings—the highest quarterly number observed since 2005.
The Department of the Treasury released its sixth report card on how mortgage lenders are doing modifying loans for eligible homeowners under the government’s Making Home Affordable program (see the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth report cards).
The scramble to secure tax refund loan partnerships before the opening day of the 2010 tax season is the direct result of a regulatory crackdown that many consumer advocates believe was long overdue. With one major lender undercapitalized and another under increased scrutiny, it is clear regulators are beginning to take notice of the issue. However, both of these actions were taken to protect the safety and soundness of the banks themselves, not to protect the Illinois consumers who paid $114 million dollars in 2006 just to receive their tax refund loan a few days earlier than if they had waited for the IRS refund.
Woodstock Institute recently called on policymakers to approve funds to replace substandard mobile homes with energy-efficient manufactured homes. These new efficiency standards and additional funding would build on successful but limited local efforts to replace mobile homes—often the housing option of last resort for many low-wealth people.
According to recent news reports, Illinois’ bankruptcies are going up—and outpacing the rest of the nation. In northern Illinois, bankruptcy filings rose by 38% in 2009, compared to 34.5% growth nationally. The trend looks likely to continue in 2010.
At the Community Reinvestment Reception, Woodstock Institute will launch the newly redesigned 2008 Online Community Lending Fact Book.
On the 25th anniversary of this project, our users continue to grow and nearly all of them are turning to our website to identify new lending patterns and opportunities. In fact, 40,000 online users turned to Woodstock for community-level lending data last year alone. While the name and format will change, the information that communities have come to rely on will not. This resource will continue to provide community-by-community lending analyses critical to keeping credit flowing to our communities.
Refund anticipation loans (RALs), which allow borrowers to receive their expected tax refunds in one to three days, cost Illinoisans more than $114 million in 2006, according to a new report. Tax filers in African-American communities were 3.5 times more likely to use RALs than were tax filers in other communities. Over 23 percent of tax filers in African-American communities used RALs to access their refund early, while only 6.8 percent of all tax filers statewide used RALs.
With Senator Dodd’s announcement on January 6 that he will retire after this year and the likelihood that his successor as Senate Banking Committee chair will be less pro-consumer, there is an even greater urgency to complete work on financial reform proposals pending in Congress. We cannot afford to lose momentum towards creating a more just financial system that protects consumers, communities, and the financial system from another near collapse, bailout, and recession.
After lull, Chicago region foreclosures ... Ed, a housing counselor (HUD approved) can help walk you through the process. Go to www.hud.gov and find a local agency in your area. CitiMortgage h...
Energy-efficient mobile home proposal wo... I myself live in a manufactured home. My electric bill runs more than the house payment. They simply dont hold a comfortable feeling its either to col...
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