Legislative briefing focuses on Texas payday lending reforms

Faith Leaders for Fair Lending will host a Legislative Staff Briefing at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21,in the Texas Capitol Auditorium. The event will highlight all the payday and auto-title lending reform bills that have been filed during the 84th Session of the Texas Legislature.

Kathryn Freeman, Public Policy Director of the Christian Life Commission, will be joined by Jeffery Patterson, Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference, to discuss what reasonable reform efforts look like for this legislative session. The pair will also examine efforts for the incremental reform of predatory lending practices in Texas, as well as the potential pitfalls in some of the proposed legislation.

Basic Christian principles require the community to provide protection for the poor and vulnerable. The members of Faith Leaders for Fair Lending witness the high cost of being poor every day, as they assist families forced into alarmingly high debt when they take out a payday or auto title loans to cover an unexpected expense.

The teachings of Christian faith provides many warnings about usury and exploitation of people. Lending practices that, intentionally or unintentionally, take unfair advantage of one’s desperate circumstances are unjust and must be reformed.

Faith Leaders for Fair Lending is a grassroots effort by people of faith to reform payday and auto-title lending practices in Texas. The principal organizations leading this effort are the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (http://texasbaptists.org) and the Texas Catholic Conference (http://www.txcatholic.org).