Montreal While in Quebec with the ACORN Canada head organizers, several of us stopped by to meet with our friends and partners at the Immigrant Workers’ Center in Montreal. We talked to Eric Shragge, president of the board, and longtime activist and academic as well as other long time staffers. In addition to the work …
Category: Citizen Wealth
Vision Property Management: Exploiting Lower Income Home Buyers as a Business Model
New Orleans In writing about Vision Property Management, the predatory and unscrupulous rent-to-own real estate company, reporters for The New York Times obviously struggled for a way to describe where to place Vision and other bottom-fishing realty companies that exploit lower income and working families’ hopes of home ownership. They ended up just talking …
The IRS Enables the Return of Refund Anticipation Loans
New Orleans Refund anticipation loans or RALs, as they were known, were one of the most predatory products on the market in their heyday targeted solely to low-and-moderate income workers who were most desperate for their tax returns. They were on the other side of the digital divide so less likely to file with the …