Velázquez Bill Would Halt Predatory Loans to Small Businesses
Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-LES, Brooklyn, Queens) introduced legislation to protect small businesses from predatory lenders.
The Small Business Lending Disclosure and Broker Regulation Act would ensure that the protections offered to consumers via the Truth in Lending Act would also apply to small businesses. Specifically, it would force small business lenders to disclose information to borrowers such as financing charges, payment amounts and collateral requirements. It would also give the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) the authority to oversee these loans, in the same manner that it oversees consumer loans.
“With the COVID-19 pandemic, our entrepreneurs are facing some of the most difficult economic conditions ever and it is vital we ensure unscrupulous lenders don’t exploit this situation by enticing small businesses into unfair and unsustainable loans,” Velázquez said. “Unfortunately, even prior to the coronavirus, there were inadequate protections for small business borrowers. This legislation extends many of the protections in consumer lending law to small firms, bringing needed transparency to small business credit markets and ensuring entrepreneurs understand their obligations and rights when they sign up for a loan.”
Maloney Holds Hearing on Trump’s Politicization of Census
Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens) held a hearing on the Trump Administration’s recent attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census.
During the hearing, the House heard from Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, as well as four former Census Bureau Directors. All of them testified that the Trump Administration’s attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census count is unconstitutional.
“The accuracy of the 2020 Census has been under attack since the day Trump took office,” Maloney said in a tweet. “Trump’s order and his desire to rush the count is an attempt to depress response rates in hard-to-count communities & manipulate the census for political gain.”
Rivera, Candii Call for Repealment of “Walking While Trans” Law
Last Wednesday, Councilmember Carlina Rivera (D-East Village, Gramercy Park) and activist T.S. Candii wrote an op-ed for the NY Daily News calling for an end to the “Walking While Trans Ban” statute.
The name refers to New York Penal Law Section 240.37, which outlaws “loitering for the purpose of prostitution”. Since its enactment, the NYPD has used the law to profile trans women – particularly trans women of color. Some activists have even nicknamed the statute “stop-and-frisk for women of color”.
“No woman should fear that she will be arrested simply for walking down the street in a tight dress or gathering with friends in public,” they wrote. “While we have taken some steps at City Hall and in Albany to address police accountability, we have so much more to do, including addressing the disproportionate police violence against women of color and non-binary New Yorkers.”
Read the full article here.
