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Policy Matters Ohio

October 2014 Ohio CASH E-News

October 03, 2014

October 2014 Ohio CASH E-News

October 03, 2014

2014 Ohio CASH meetings

Join us at 11 a.m. on Thursday October 30 and Thursday December 10 for the next Ohio CASH Meetings.  Topics coming soon! 

CFED Update

The Corporation for Enterprise Development launched an Assets and Opportunity Local Data Center, featuring local data on family financial stability, searchable at the county and municipal level.  Users can customize, print or share reports on Facebook or Twitter.  Visit the Local Data Center here.

The September CFED Assets Learning Conference was packed full of workshops and speakers to help practitioners further the asset building movement.  Ohio CASH members Lucy Crane of the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Suzanne Parks of the Ohio Community Development Corporation Association, and Kalitha Williams of Policy Matters Ohio met with members of Congress to share their programming and discuss family financial stability. 

Cuyahoga County EITC Coalition Program Evaluation

Poliy Matters Ohio evaluated the Cuyahoga County Earned Income Tax Coalition’s free tax programs.   The coalition of over 40 community partners helps thousands of low- to moderate-income families file their taxes each year.  In the last tax season, the coalition served over 12,000 people, a 9 percent increase from the previous year.  The evaluation found that nearly $15 million in refunds had been claimed and every dollar spent by the coalition brought $30 in state and federal refunds into the county.  Read the full report here.

Ohio CDC Association Annual Conference

The Ohio CDC Association is having its 30th annual conference October 9-10, in Dayton.  This year’s conference, “Reinventing Our Communities,”  will feature Peter Kageyama, author of For the Love of Cities and co-founder of the Creative Cities Summit.  Registration is still open here

Payday Lending Update

During the CFED Assets Learning Conference congressional meetings, participants asked Congress members to support the Durbin-Cartwright bill “The Protecting Consumers from Unreasonable Credit Rates Act,” which would create a national interest rate cap of 36% APR for consumer financial products, including payday loans.  Licensed payday lenders currently charge rates up to almost 800% in Ohio.  Unfortunately, the legislation has no co-sponsors from Ohio.  Several Ohio CASH partner organizations joined the sign-on letter distributed to Congressional offices.  These included Coalition on Housing and Homelessness in Ohio (COHHIO), Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland, Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies, Ohio CDC Association, and Ohio Poverty Law Center.  Read the full letter and press release here.  

The Military Lending Act (MLA) was passed in 2007 to protect military personnel from abusive lending practices.  One crucial provision creates a 36% interest rate limit on financial products.  Unfortunately, payday lenders got around the law by creating products that differed slightly from those outlined in the MLA, and continued to charge high rates to service members.  Recently, the Obama Administration proposed rules that would close the loopholes in MLA.  Ohio CASH and COHHIO joined other consumer advocacy organizations around the nation to support the proposal.  Read the Ohio press release here.  

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