Michael Pope and WAMU Highlight Victims of Car Title Lending

Over the last week, WAMU reporter Michael Pope aired an insightful five-part series highlighting the stories of Virginia car title lending victims. 

Finding these victims and highlighting their stories took a lot of perseverance and it's an impressive series. 

 I have been fighting these practices for the last three years.  In 2013 and 2014, I introduced HB2323 and HB973 to give the Board of Supervisors the authority to limit the number that can locate in an area and in 2015, I introduced HB2011 prohibiting consumer finance companies from locating in the same storefront - which is a major focus of this story. 

You can listen to each story here:

Story #1 - Inside The Fast Cash World of Virginia Car-Title Lenders (Oct. 5, 2015)

Story #2 - How Virginia Became the Region's Hub For High-Interest Loans (Oct. 6, 2015)

Story #3 - For Military Personnel, High Interest Lenders Aren't Far Away (Oct. 7, 2015)

Story #4 - As Repossessions Pile Up, Critics of Car Title Lenders Call for Change (Oct. 8, 2015)

Story #5 - Inside Virginia's Car-Title Loan Industry and Why It Drives Watchdog Groups Crazy (Oct. 9, 2015)

Attorney General Mark Herring has announced a new unit to focus on predatory lending and on Friday, Governor McAuliffe announced that he is also going to propose an interest rate cap.  No word on what that number will be, but it's nice to finally have some company fighting these companies.