AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE - NO SUBPRIME! NO ARMs!
CIOP, in partnership with Fannie Mae and National City Bank have announced a new low-down payment, no credit score home loan program.
With NO MONEY DOWN, low and moderate-income folks in Central Illinois can now own their own single-family home, including a home
that needs renovation! These are not those crazy adjustible interest rate loans to low teaser loans, they're good, standard priced long-term home purchase loans.
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PAYDAY LENDING
Know what "business" outnumbers fast food chains in many Central Illinois strip malls? Payday lenders. Last year the Illinois legislature enacted the aptly named Msgr Egan payday loan regulations (named for the community organizing icon Msgr Egan of Chicago). The regulations limited repeated roll-over of loans and interest rates to "only" 32%. But the payday sharks found a way around the regs. The nation's largest payday lender, Advance America, Inc., now only offers in Illinois a so-called "installment loan" for 550% interest! This means a $500 payday loan will cost, in the end, $1,350. Check it out: http://www.advanceamerica.net//files/fees/il_fees.pdf
BANKING REINVESTMENT AND CRA
Through a review of regional bank disclosure data, CIOP discovered that many Central Illinois banks were failing to provide affordable
housing loans to working class families. CIOP has challenged three regional banks to increase their lending to low and moderate income
borrowers. These challenges were possible due to a law called the Community Reinvestment Act. CIOP's challenges were met with initial
resistance but ultimately resulted in negotiations with each bank.
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LIVING WAGE
Living Wage surfaced as an organizing issue in Bloomington-Normal through a CIOP "People-talking-to-people" meeting, January 2004. Since then CIOP has seen hundreds of residents attend community meetings, occupied the offices of the city owned arena that is the focus of much of the living wage campaign, and read 2 polls conduced by a local university stating over 60% of all residents favor Living Wage, and 3 out of 4 arena patrons are willing to pay a ticket surcharge to pay for it. But the Bloomington City Council still can't seem to figure out how to approve it.
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ACCESS TO TRANSPORTATION
For thousands of residents public transportation is their access to mobility and freedom. This is particularly true for people with
disabilities and lower income families without cars. It is also a jobs issue. After many meetings, large (300 leaders) and small (meetings with US Senate Obama and Durbin staff), CIOP achieved the victory of a evening bus service pilot project set to kick-off summer, 2007. CIOP leaders remain in negotiations with transit staff and consultants to determine routes and most importantly, continued funding after the pilot expires in 2008.
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HOMELESSNESS
Within the short walk between the new multi-million dollar Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the only home Abe ever owned, live 30 or more homeless men and women camped every night outside the Lincoln library. City officials have been arguing for years about what to do, and this year agencies get $460,000 in federal homeless funds, but nobody ever thought about asking the homeless themselves what they needed. That is until CIOP leaders started to build relationships with the homeless and ask them what they wanted to do. They said they demand a say in what happens to them.
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PREDATORY LENDING
Predatory lending is one of the leading causes of the home foreclosure crisis across the United States. In Springfield, a CIOP community,
foreclosures have increased 5,000% in the last 8 years and the primary reason for that increase is the unscrupulous practice of predatory
lending. We challenged finance companies that were engaging in predatory lending practices to stop these practices and to repair the predatory
loans they had made.
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SAVING FAMILY FARMS
In the last 20 years, 300,000 family farms have gone under. As a result, family farmers cannot afford to compete with corporate
agribusiness. Families Supporting Independent Agriculture (FSIA) are lead by family farm leaders who are organizing to not only save their way of life and that of rural communities, but also good land stewardship and farm practices. In 2007 FSIA created the lowest cost farm lending program in Illinois (when farmers buy locally) but also is challenging the University of Illinois's farm ownership policies that are forcing good farmers off their land.
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Central Illinois has a significant and important immigrant community. In Champaign county a migrant community works at harvest, and in Beardstown, IL a sizable immigrant community makes important contributions to the region's economy and culture. Coming from our collective faith perspective, the "stranger" of Scripture can also be understood as the "immigrant." In 2005 CIOP assisted immigrant Hispanic hotel cleaning men and women whose salaries were not paid to them in Bloomington and Normal, IL. Last year, CIOP, along with member group Elizabeth Ann Seton Project of Springfield, began assisting Beardstown families in securing homeownership. But in April 2007, fear replaced community with the Federal government arresting hard working families in an immigration raid. Included in the arrests is a High School honor role girl who has disappeared within the detention maze.
