Center for Responsible Lending

The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization working to get rid of fraudulent lending practices and to educate the public about lending options and to push for policies that control predatory lending. Established in 2002 by Self-Help, CRL is a nonprofit, nonpartisan analysis and policy organization that concentrates on financial products and services, which includes mortgages, credit cards, payday lending, and bank overdraft fees. It is tankless water heaters affiliated with the Self-Help Credit Union, also founded by Martin Eakes in Durham, N.C. Among the very first groups to warn about the impending subprime mortgage meltdown, CRL has issued analysis reports, issue briefs and policy statements on a range of topics, including, for example, the excessive effect of predatory loans on black and Hispanic communities and also the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s failure to do its job of overseeing national banks to prevent predatory lending in the mortgage, overdraft and payday lending arenas. CRL has pushed difficult for monetary reform–including the creation of the Consumer Monetary Protection Agency–in metal detector the wake of the mortgage crisis. Martin Eakes, the current CEO of CRL and Self-Help, describes the mission of the organizations as follows: “The financial issues we’ve noticed in subprime lending came about through a narrow focus on self-enrichment among brokers, lenders and investors on Wall Street. We should redefine success to consist of the common great, and identify that we’re all enriched through sustainable lending that strengthens families and communities.” CRL’s executives are often relied upon by government officials to discuss and suggest rules and legislation created for protecting customers, taxpayers and shareholders. The president of CRL, Michael Calhoun, has testified numerous occasions n front of the House Committee microdermabrasion machines on Monetary Services concerning the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009. Eric Stein, a senior vice president at CRL, served recently as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consumer Protection in the Department of the Treasury. CRL’s research has been praised by the Federal Reserve Board, on whose Consumer Advisory Council Michael Calhoun has sat. It was CRL’s work with attorneys in Maine that exposed the socalled Robosigning scandal, exactly where mortgage services routinely broke the law by submitting thousands false affidavits in foreclosure procedures about the country. CRL works with consumer, business and civil rights groups to craft typical sense policies and law to prevent the kind of economic meltdown the country is now going through and that has so severely hurt camera track dolly customers, taxpayers, shareholders and also the workforce. Based on its analysis, CRL lobbies in favor of rules and laws that promote common-sense monetary services practices to get rid of the kind of predatory loans that nearly wrecked the U.S. economy. Sensible rules of the road benefit not only individual customers, but taxpayers, shareholders and eventually the financial services business itself. A key component of CRL mission and history has been to conduct cautious research that informs policy discussions and outcomes in better lending practices. CRL has produced countless reports that shed new light on lending practices and their results on borrowers and the economy, including main reports on subprime mortgage foreclosures, payday lending and credit card abuses, and bank and credit union overdraft expenses. CRL works with state partners, providing legal and technical help in much more than 35 states. We have successfully supported community efforts to finish abusive payday lending in at least a dozen hard money lenders locations, and helped enact protections against predatory mortgage lending practices in about 20 states. But CRL’s relationships with its credit union and lending affiliates-as well as several of its donors with vested interests in the monetary industry-paint a much various picture. As much more is revealed about CRL’s role within the subprime mortgage meltdown, the group’s description of itself as a third-party watchdog appears much more disingenuous. The onset of the current monetary crisis has raised serious questions about its credibility, suggesting that CRL’s brand of “responsible lending,” described the ability of unqualified borrowers to get loans many of them cannot afford, is really a misnomer.