 Hello everyone thank you for joining us for this webinar. Should you have any questions during the event please submit them via the Q&A feature which can be found at the bottom of the screen. That being said we're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to today's webinar ending the cycle. Alternatives to payday loans in Illinois. As you know Governor Prisker signed the Predatory Loan Prevention Act on Tuesday. This is great news for consumers and has been a long time coming. Thanks to the leadership of Senator Collins, Senator Belt, Representative Harper, the Illinois legislative Black Caucus and all the advocates who made this possible. Illinois is now the gold standard for the country in capping short-term loans at 36%. That's a big deal in this climate that we've been living in. So we're just very proud of Illinois. Today you'll hear from Meagan Dugan Bassett, fellow at New America Chicago and Tracy Frizzle, Executive Director for the Economic Awareness Council. Many of you know Brent Adams, Senior VP of Policy and Communication at Woodstock Institute. He knows all the ins and outs of the law and is ready to take on all your questions during the Q&A. Just I will call him the papa of the fight on the payday loans. He's made some significant contributions as a pioneer in this area. I'm Wynonna Redmond, president of WinWin Communications. We joined this campaign. We'd like to join good fights a few months ago to support Woodstock and the rest of the PLPA coalition in sharing the great news about the bill. Now law and providing impact to communities, particularly black and brown communities, information about alternative resources. From a communications perspective, we know you play a critical role in the lives of your constituents and we're here today to support you in that role. We want to make sure that you are armed with all that you need for this important movement. Now we know that some of you are already getting pushback about the new law. We also know that the predatory lenders are looking for loopholes. Next slide and carve outs. They are also threatening job losses. This all brings us to the purpose of today's webinar. Next slide. You have options and so do your constituents. I believe Brent will also be sharing information about the resource guide and Woodstock's recent jobs report under the PLPA. If there's one major theme in 2021, it's jobs, jobs, jobs. I will hand this over to Megan, but thank you for joining us today. Thanks so much, Wynonna. I appreciate that. I'm Megan Dugan-Bassett from New America, Chicago. I just want to say really quickly before I dig into the options that we're going to be talking about on the resource guide, many of the partners on the coalition helped create this resource guide and it is just chock full of resources for your constituents. We know that there's a lot of different reasons why people end up taking out really high-cost predatory loans. Sometimes people just aren't quite making ends meet and they can't get to the end of the month. We know that other people find themselves suddenly with big hospital bills or possibly a large expense to invest in their future, like college bills. This guide provides resources for all of those situations. In the guide, we have four different sections. We talk about ways to lower people's bills, finding some additional income sources, lower-cost loans. There are short-term loans out there that people can get for less than 36 percent APR, as well as some options for talking to a financial coach. You can go to the first slide or next slide, sorry. In the very first section of the resource guide, we talk about ways for people to lower bills. This can help people. This is for two reasons. One, some of the bills that are in this section, people may be the emergency that people are looking for help with. We have ideas to help them reduce the debt amount that they have. It also is a way to allow people just to get space in their budget to try to free up cash to be able to meet whatever emergency that they find themselves in. There is information about housing resources, utilities. If people owe a lot to utilities, car payments, student loans, credit cards, and there's actually quite a bit more. You can go to the next slide. The very first section in the guide is focused on housing. We have options for people who are home owners, but also people who are renters. For people who are home owners, they can talk to their mortgage loan servicer to ask about a COVID-19 forbearance to temporarily pause their payments. This is actually something that's common across a lot of companies. There's a lot of companies that if someone has lost some hours due to the pandemic has lost their job, their spouse or another family member has lost their job, someone's been sick. People can actually ask for a COVID-19 hardship with various companies, and they will have options for them. There is a phone number for people who are at risk of foreclosure. Then we also have quite a few options for people who are renters. The state of Illinois right now has over $800 million in funding for assistance. The rental assistance programs in suburban Cook County, Champaign County, Madison and McHenry County are currently open for assistance. Then the others that include the city of Chicago and statewide will open in April most likely. People can check out Housing Action Illinois's page for more information about those and other options that they have. That site is being updated over time as new resources are available. Rentervention is another option people have that is focused on the city of Chicago, but they will help people in other parts of Illinois. You can go to the next slide. If people are having trouble paying for student loans, we have some information for them. For direct federal loans, payments are actually suspended through September 31st and people may or may not know that. There's also a lot of other options that are referenced in the link that we have in the resource guide. If loans aren't covered by that order, people can call their loan servicer and ask about income-driven payments, deferring payments, or forbearance. There's also a resource called Summer that can help people simplify their student loan payments and possibly save money. Just FYI, FFEL and Perkins loans are not covered by the order, but people can find out more information for other options they have if they have those types of loans on the link in the resource guide. You can go to the next slide. If people have accounts in collections, connecting with the collections agency can be scary for people, but it is absolutely essential. They have to talk to them and let them know they want to find a solution. They can request a payment plan. They can ask to adjust an existing payment plan. We also have information in the guide. More than is on the slide for people who find themselves being sued by a creditor or a collection agency or who are threatened with a lawsuit. There are a few options in Illinois, in different parts of the Illinois, as you see on the slide there, for help, local legal aid organizations that can help people with that situation. Next slide. In section two of the guide, we talk about additional income sources. This isn't necessarily specific to getting jobs, but this is more about one-time income sources if someone is in a difficult situation that they can get and some of these sources could be thousands of dollars for people. I'm actually on the Get My Payment Illinois team along with Tracy. We have a website. We know that there are people in Illinois, particularly low income people who still haven't gotten their first or second stimulus check. It is possible for them to still get that. We have a lot of information on each of the rounds of stimulus checks, ways to find out how to get help for filing taxes, ways to find out all the things that people might need to help them get those stimulus checks at that website. We also have a hotline that is specifically for people who have maybe a tougher case where they just can't quite figure it out or for people who don't have internet access. One thing to make sure people know, people who weren't eligible for the last stimulus check, so the first stimulus check may actually be eligible now. We're talking about people, so previously, adult dependents were not eligible. People who were caring for them were not eligible to get checks. They are now eligible. Individuals who are perhaps married to someone who, if they have a social security number but they're married to someone who does not, they actually are now eligible for all three stimulus checks. Anyone who hasn't gotten their stimulus check but thinks they're eligible, they can actually request the recovery credit on their taxes. Some of them may not need to file taxes normally, but we have a lot of resources to help them do that for free and help them get help. Also, and this could be thousands of dollars for some people. We also have people who, sorry, my daughter is being called right now. The earned income tax credit and the child tax credit are also much higher this year than they normally are. Particularly, the child tax credit has been doubled. It's also refundable. There's a lot of changes this year, so people can actually get, there's thousands and thousands of dollars people could possibly be getting from the government when they file taxes. The earning of tax credit has also been increased, and if people have lost, four people who have no children, it's actually been almost tripled. The top amount they can receive. For people who maybe lost their job in 2020 and they would be getting a much smaller EITC this year, there's actually a new provision just this year called the look-back provision where they can use their 2019 taxes to get, if it would give them a larger EITC this year. There's a lot of money particularly low income people out there. If people earn less than $72,000 a year, they actually can access the IRS's free file program. That includes a number of mainstream commercial online filing tools like TurboTax. There's quite a few that are run by large companies, and those should be free to those people, except possibly for filing state taxes. I will now turn it over to my colleague Tracy. All right, so going to the next slide. I'll be talking about options for lower-cost loans, because there are many options that are listed in the resource guide that are available for short-term loans for less than 36% APR. All the following are good sources for affordable short-term loans from reputable institutions committed to these responsible learning lending standards. The first are CDFIs, which is Community Development Financial Institutions. There are three listed here, but there are many of these institutions in the state of Illinois. They are really committed to offering affordable products to empower communities in economic distress. Three options that are highlighted here are the Capital Good Fund, Great Lakes Credit Union, and Self-Help Credit Union. And we'll talk about these a little bit more in just a minute. The second option is the American FinTech Council members, and these are online options that are using technology to offer affordable, transparent, and responsible products. Again, they're committed to offering these products for 36% APR or often less, so there are a lot of good options here. Some examples of those are the Lending Club, Avant, Prosper, Best Egg, Upstart, SoFi, and Funding Circle. The last thing I want to highlight is banking services. Banking services are important for two reasons. One is many of our bank on partners have short-term loans available for 36% or less, but also even if you're using one of the other options, having a bank account that's safe and affordable is a very key and important component to be able to successfully manage your loan. Bank on Illinois is just starting their relaunch. This is run through the Illinois State Comptroller's Office. Bank on Chicago relaunched in the spring of 2020. We now have 12 safe and affordable products in the City of Chicago. These are products that don't have overdrafts, that have a low minimums, and that have low fees. So they can be very useful in helping individuals to manage their loans. Also, several bank on members do have loans, short-term loans again for 36% or less. Two of those are Great Lakes and Self-Help. So I just wanted to highlight that again. Going to the next slide. One great resource to highlight is the Capital Good Fund. This is a non-profit CDFI. It's national, but it operates here in Illinois, and it offers a crisis loan with 5% APR, no payments due, and no interest charged for the first three months. The average credit score for their customers is 580. So you can find this at capitalgoodfund.org or their phone number 866-584-3651. We can go to the next slide. Another option to really think about is finding a financial coach. They can really help you walk through many of the options for resources that are included in the resource guide and be that one-on-one assistance for your clients or residents. So the first option for financial coaching is again the Capital Good Fund. The hotline is listed there. Again, it's 866-584-3651. And again, that is for financial coaching. The second option is for financial navigators. This is a program for Chicago residents. It's run by Heartland Alliance, and it's run in partnership with the City of Chicago, the Department of Family and Support Services, as well as Bank on Chicago and the Economic Awareness Council. Financial navigators can be found at finnav.org slash Chicago. This program helps individuals to find financial resources in their community. I'll highlight that it's not exactly financial coaching where you work long-term one-on-one with a financial coach, but what the financial navigators can do is if you contact this program, they can help you find many of the resources, types of resources that are included in the resource list. Basically, any financial question that your clients or residents might have, they can connect you with solutions and individuals that can help with those questions and problems. So it's a great free resource that is again available to Chicago residents. And I will hand it over to Brynn. We can go to the next slide here. So now we have time for about 10 minutes of question and answer. You can submit your Q&A in that chat function. If we don't have a chance to get to all of the Q&A today, we'll be sure to follow up with responses to your questions so long as you don't ask anonymously. And we will also be following up with a link to the resource guide. But I'll get started and please feel free to continue dropping your questions into the Q&A function. The first question that we got was, will the new law keep people from getting emergency loans? And Brynn, I'm wondering if you could answer that question. Sure. Thanks, Amy. The Capital Good Fund product that I believe is described on the slide is, in fact, called a crisis loan. So it was developed specifically for emergencies. It may have, in fact, been developed during the pandemic, but not only is it 5% APR, but there are no, there's an obligate, there's a ability to have no payments for the first period of a loan. So you can delay both the payments and the interest rate is very low. So Capital Good Fund is a good source for an emergency type of loan. But any of the lending options that are described on the resource guide would be potential alternatives for emergency type situations. The advantage of being online is it's quick. And that is how they are able to charge less is because they have these automated systems that do the underwriting. So they replace people with automated systems that do the underwriting. Excellent. Thanks so much, Brent. I saw another question coming through the chat. For folks who lack computer or internet access, will there be physical copies of the resource guide available? Meagan, do you think you could take that one? Yeah, absolutely. Yes, so we do have a downloadable version both on the Woodstock Institute page and the Illinois Asset Builder group website. We also, so it's very easy for people to print it out and we suggest that legislators print out some and keep them at their office. We can also print some out and mail them to if that's useful. And we're expecting to put out version 2.0 of the guide, so we're planning on adding additional resources and testing of people, making sure it's really clear for people. And so that version will definitely be available in printed form as well. Thanks so much, Meagan. One other question we got here are the payday loan stores going to have to shut their doors because of the new law. Brent, would you mind answering that question, please? Sure. The payday lenders will need to decide whether to make safe and affordable loans or not. If they choose not to, they will likely close and that is their choice. I saw a question come in through the chat that says what kinds of qualifications are necessary for the capital good fund loans? Well, underwriting, I'll answer that. Underwriting, which means determining ability to pay. So the safe and affordable lenders, affordable means interest rate and safe means that you can afford to repay the loan. So capital good fund will undergo or undertake an assessment of the ability to repay the loan and that is very individualized. So there is no specific set of criteria, but we put in the average credit score there because that is a credit score that many would consider subprime. So that is certainly not a prohibition. It's not as though you need to have a 600 or higher credit score in order to qualify. And I think it's also interesting that that 580 is the average. So there's of course credit scores below that as well. That's a very good point. I'm wondering if Winona or Brent or Megan, if you might be able to say a few things about the jobs report that has recently come out. I don't see any other questions in the chat for now, but I'll continue monitoring it. Well, Winona gave a little plug for it in her in her opening and last week we released a report showing that the jobs that will be created by virtue of folks saving money from not spending them on predatory loans will create anywhere between 5500 and 8800 jobs. That's gross jobs that doesn't take into account job losses that some of the industry say will happen as a result of the law. But even taking into account their worst case scenario, it will create net positive jobs. When you take $400 million a year and put it back in folks' pockets that they then spend, that creates jobs. It's the same analysis behind the stimulus checks. Some folks say this around tax cuts that when you put more money in people's pockets, they spend it. That creates increased demand and that demand gets met by hiring people. So we released a report last week that says that. And you can find it on our website woodstockintst.org. And that's also a good place to access the resource guide. So that's kind of a one-stop shop kind of place to go. Thanks, Brent. I received one more question. It's not directly related to the resource guide, but there's a question about whether there's any talk from the federal government about allowing student loan debt to fall under bankruptcy. I'm not sure if anyone here can answer that. I'll take a shot at it. The bankruptcy reform, as some people put it, of several years ago did limit the ability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. And for a lot of folks burden with student loans. And that's a lot of folks. The cumulative student loan debt in this country is into trillions of dollars. So there are discussions about trying to reform the bankruptcy laws to make it easier to discharge those debts. I don't know where that stands right now, but you know a lot there's been a lot of change in Washington DC in case folks haven't noticed. So there may be something coming down the pike that's hopeful in that arena. Yeah, I used to work in this space. So I'll just say there was a really large commission that was put together a few years ago that did a report on this and they made a couple of recommendations for how to do that. I don't know where that stands right now, but we can check in with our higher education department and share that answer with you. And I will mention there has been a lot of discussion, which I am more familiar with, about forgiving student loan cancellation. And there very well may be something coming down from the federal government that cancels a certain amount of student loan debt for certain folks, like certain folks within a certain income category, for example. And so there is a very strong movement to do that. So I wouldn't be surprised if something, some relief in the form of student loan debt cancellation came from the federal government. Thanks, Brent. I want to give folks another minute or so to submit any other questions. Oh, I just saw one come in. Can anyone speak further about the FinTech loans and how they kind of played in, how those FinTechs played into this advocacy effort? Sure. You know, you'd have to ask them their tactical decision in deciding to be part of the solution in this regard and rather than trying to fight the solution. But I can tell you that having spoken to them, they see 36 percent as the direction we're headed and indeed more and more states are adopting 36 percent rate caps. Our good friends in red state Nebraska did so in the last election. So they decided to be part of the conversation about solving this problem and being part of the trend towards this outcome rather than fighting it. The idea in part being that being part of the conversation might enable them to help shape it in a way that suits their interests. But it has been a historic partnership for them, which is they are the largest segment of the unsecured personal loan market, the largest, larger than the banks, certainly larger than the payday and title lenders. So they are the largest segment and they are supporters of the PLPA and 36 percent caps nationwide. And I'll just add, you know, I don't know that we talked about this in our discussion, but there are many other fintech loans that are not good loans. And so we've chosen to really specific that are, you know, very high interests that can really trap people in this really terrible or they're paying way, way more than they owed in the first place and have trouble getting out, you know, getting out from under that. But we did put several options. And as we kind of looked through these fintech loans that have less than 36 percent APR, there were a lot of options and they are available for a lot of different types of purchases. There are some that are available for businesses. There are some that are available for different types of expenditures. People might have anything from schooling to, you know, a large purchase that they need to make. Let's say someone has to buy a computer for a new job or something like that. So there's a lot out there and we included, I would say, at least 10 in the guide. But we also will probably be looking at more and seeing if there's any others from that particular the American Fintech Council that we want to include in the next round of the guide. Thanks Megan. I think that wraps up our Q&A portion. So thank you so much for everyone to attend. And I'll ask, Angela, if you could please pass it back to the slides and I'll pass it to Winona. So as you see, what's next to protect and educate? One of the big things that we have to celebrate in a climate like this, we've dealt with a year like no other, with every kind of equity and economic equity, economic justice is one of the strongest things. This is the Predatory Loan Protection Act is a huge accomplishment. We need to make sure that you, you know, that we get the word out that there are options. Brent talked about jobs, jobs, jobs, but this is a form of empowerment for a community that has been at such a disadvantage. So we really need to make sure that you help get the message out on options. There will be positive jobs created. There will be positive alternatives and we want to make sure that message gets out. So thanks for coming today. Remember the resources discussed today will continue to get updated over time. We know that you are going to get plenty of pushback, but this is something that Illinois has taken a stand on. And we're in the land of Lincoln and we really, we want to just make sure that the Illinois Black Caucus and all of this historic reform that it continues. And hopefully we accomplished what we needed to do today, which is to make sure you understand all of the resources. And when you see the coalition logos, there's a diverse group that has come together to really fight and make a difference. So for further questions, please, you've got Meagan, Dugan, Bassist information and you've got Brent Adams. We really need to give Brent credit. Brent pioneered some of the first legislation, was it 16 years ago, Brent, on this. But we can all do something. And this is something that Illinois has done. This is one of the best solutions to some of the disparities. And we are setting a model for the nation. So please make sure you follow up with Brent or Meagan if there are questions. But thanks for joining us today. And there are the logos of our coalition. You want to have good friends when you have a big fight. And so thank you to the coalition members.