Protesters to rally against high payday lending fees

With federal regulators scrutinizing payday lenders, activists in Las Vegas and across the country will take to the streets to protest an industry known for its sky-high fees.

The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada plans to hold a rally at 10 a.m. Tuesday in front of payday lender Moneytree’s store at 2950 W. Sahara Ave.

Activists will be wearing hazmat suits and holding “hazard” signs, according to a news release today.

The rally is part of a broader push of 10 protests in 10 states, coordinated by Chicago-based National People’s Action.

“While some states and cities have worked to put a stop to predatory lending, federal laws still largely allow payday lenders to prey on vulnerable communities and benefit from borrowers’ financial hardship — with annual interest rates that routinely reach 400 percent or more,” the news release said.

Moneytree has roughly 120 branches throughout the Western U.S. and British Columbia. Efforts to reach a spokesperson today were unsuccessful.

The protests come a few weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking to write the first federal rules for the $46 billion payday-loan industry, which has typically been regulated by states.

Critics say these lenders get cash-strapped borrowers stuck in a revolving door of short-term, high-rate loans they can’t pay back. According to the Journal, the Financial Protection Bureau is “exploring ways” to force payday lenders to make sure customers can pay off the debts.

Payday-loan customers typically borrow a few hundred dollars at a time, but triple-digit interest rates are often the norm.

In Nevada, payday lenders charge an average annual interest rate of 521 percent, one of the highest rates in the country, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

All told, it usually costs $60 to borrow $300 for two weeks from a Nevada payday lender, and $596 to borrow $300 for five months, Pew found.

Las Vegas is ripe for payday loans — a large portion of the workforce has low-wage resort jobs, many residents have next to nothing in savings, and Nevada, with just six other states, has no limit on interest rates payday lenders can charge.

Some 15.3 percent of Las Vegas-area households reported using an “alternative financial service” in the past 30 days when surveyed in 2013, compared to 12 percent nationally. Another 14.6 percent of households had used such services in the past year, versus 12.6 percent nationally, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a banking regulator.

Those services include non-bank money orders, check-cashing stores and payday loans, as well as pawn shops, refund-anticipation loans and auto-title loans.

Meanwhile, almost 56 percent of households statewide are in a “persistent state of financial insecurity,” as they have little or no savings to cover basic expenses in the event of a job loss, health crisis or other emergency, according to a report last year by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development.

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