› Home › Economy ›

Wealth & poverty

Payday loan industry: the stories

Ambika Kandasamy, SF Public Press — Feb 3 2012 - 9:44pm

Public Press writer Rick Jurgens reported on San Francisco's payday loan industry in our Winter 2011 print edition. He found that large corporations like Wells Fargo and Credit Suisse are among the biggest backers of these profitable low-finance firms. A subsequent whirl around the world of social media has revealed that payday loans are a fact of financial life for many, and some alternatives do exist. 

Ordinance would put restrictions on Castro District plazas

T.J. Johnston, SF Public Press — Jan 26 2012 - 1:13pm

A proposal to regulate two popular Castro District hangouts by restricting chairs and shopping carts is a step closer to becoming city law. The Board of Supervisors will decide Tuesday on an ordinance, which passed the Land Use Committee this week, that would ban nighttime sitting, sleeping, vending, smoking and even pushing a shopping cart in Harvey Milk and Jane Warner Plazas.

Helping the homeless at S.F. public library

Julia Scott, KALW News — Jan 23 2012 - 2:36pm

A medley of people wait for the San Francisco Public Library to open in the morning. Students on a deadline. People who really need a library book. Retired folks. And people checking email. As the doors open, patrons stream into the atrium at the main branch near the Civic Center in downtown San Francisco. Some head to their favorite reading nook; others to computers to start surfing the Web.

Advocates launch campaign to get anti-trafficking bill on state ballot

Elena Shore, New America Media — Jan 12 2012 - 11:43am
Sorry, you need to install flash to see this content.

A campaign to get a new measure on the November ballot that would increase penalties against human traffickers in California launched Wednesday in San Francisco. The campaign, announced on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, requires 800,000 signatures to make it into the state ballot. The California Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) Act would increase prison terms and fines for human traffickers (up to $1.5 million, which would go to fund victim services), remove barriers to prosecute child sex traffickers, require convicted sex traffickers to register as sex offenders and disclose their Internet accounts, mandate training for law enforcement officers, and prohibit the use of the sexual history of trafficked victims in court.

100% ad-free news for the 99%

Michael Stoll, SF Public Press — Dec 30 2011 - 2:15pm

In the Public Press, elites don’t dictate coverage

If you missed it, the Winter 2011 edition of the Public Press (Issue 5) went on sale in November, and it came on the heels of a national conversation about how to fund and fortify community journalism. This is the editorial on page 2.

Issue 5 of the San Francisco Public Press, an ad-free nonprofit local newspaper, takes cues from noncommercial magazines, some of which have become influential of late. One model was Adbusters, the “culturejammer” magazine that inspired the global Occupy movement. Our approach at the Public Press has always been to look for stories that see the city and the Bay Area from the viewpoint of average people instead of just the elites, whose concerns are well represented. While we don’t practice advocacy journalism, we do strive to cover, in depth, stories and communities that commercially funded media don’t often pay attention to.

As work conditions shift, inhumanity of immigrant labor becomes human rights concern

Alejandra Cuéllar, SF Public Press — Dec 27 2011 - 12:37pm

Gabriel Thompson worked alongside immigrants in the back of restaurants in New York City and in factories that produced some of the most basic foods in the American diet: lettuce and chicken. Not an immigrant himself, Thompson used his investigative reporting techniques to lift a veil on working conditions that many undocumented immigrants and low-income Americans face daily. His colleagues experienced excruciating soreness from physical labor. They had no employee benefits. And they had to do monotonous and repetitive work, which led to a high rate of injuries. Thompson’s one-year immersion into the lives of working immigrants, documented in his recent book, “Working in the Shadows,” comes at a time when working conditions are changing. The immigrant workers are leaving the workplace under pressure from law enforcement, a trend that is forcing the employers to look for new ways of attracting workers.

California legislature may expand lending limit

Rick Jurgens, SF Public Press — Dec 15 2011 - 5:18pm

LEGISLATION: Lawmaker wants to raise payday loan limit to $500; others want restrictions

“Fast Easy Cash when you want it!” That’s the promise on the cover of an application for a “cash ’til payday” loan from DFC Global Corp. The company operates eight Money Mart stores in San Francisco, more than any other payday lender. But fast money comes at a high price —an annual percentage rate up to 459 percent. Currently, California has a $300 limit on each payday loan. But legislation pending in Sacramento would raise the maximum amount to $500. While supporters of the bill say the loans benefit working people, consumer advocates worry that borrowing at high interest rates can sink poor people further into debt. That was the concern of the San Francisco city attorney’s office, which this fall settled a suit with a payday lender accused of exceeding the legal limit.

Big banks help payday lenders offer quick cash at steep prices

Rick Jurgens, SF Public Press — Dec 15 2011 - 5:17pm

BUSINESS: Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse among biggest backers of profitable low-finance firms

Even as the Occupy San Francisco encampment at the base of Market Street expressed outrage at big banks and high finance, it remained business as usual at some of the city’s less glamorous financial establishments. San Franciso-based Wells Fargo, as well as other banks, are investing big money in firms that lend money at rates they are prohibited from offering. High-interest, unsecured “payday” loans are readily available at 32 establishments along Market Street and in low-income communities around the city. The banks’ names and brands are nowhere to be seen, but they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in businesses that charge an annual percentage rate of 400 percent or more, a practice once considered by the state of California to be “usury.”

S.F. food providers scrambling to find money to pay for fresh goods as federal funds disappear

Amy Graham, SF Public Press — Nov 22 2011 - 3:51pm

Because of the economic meltdown, an increasing number of San Francisco residents are finding themselves hungry and in need – and the agencies that would normally help fill those bellies are drastically cutting what they can provide. San Francisco social service agencies face another hard-hitting blow, as the San Francisco Food Bank, which supplies more than 400 local organizations with the majority of their food, is still reeling from the loss of federal funding.

Seniors selling what they get from food banks

Juan Gomez, Mission Local — Nov 14 2011 - 11:37am

Visit the farmers market in downtown San Francisco on Sundays, and you may see, past the stands of organic lettuce and fresh flowers, a few elderly women hunched over a random assortment of condiments and canned goods. As security approaches, they quickly scatter, only to set up shop on the opposite corner a few moments later. According to several food pantries, elderly recipients of free food disbursements are turning around and selling the donations at various locations throughout San Francisco. 

Syndicate content