IPA addresses issues that are identified by our member groups. They’re issues that speak to our prophetic call to justice, people are really talking about, and by working together we can have a real impact.
The American Dream remains the dream of homeownership. Homeownership remains the largest source of wealth creation and retirement asset building for a majority of Americans. This dream was highjacked by big banks and their corporate and political allies with the creation of subprime loans and adjustible rate home loans. Our “Great Recession” began and was fueled by the creation and marketing of billions of subprime loans which ultimately wrecked the economy. IPA believes the need for affordable housing finance to help working families achieve homeownership is a dream worth fighting for. These loans need to be affordable and understandable, without tricks and traps – and lent by banks big and small.
Know what “business” outnumbers fast food chains in our communities? Payday lenders. In 2010 IPA, joining forces with the Egan Campaign, closed some of the worst loopholes in Illinois’ payday lending law (limited loans to two a year, some restrictions on ability to repay the loan, increased disclosure). But while an important battle was won, the war continues. The nation’s largest payday lender, Advance America, Inc., now offers in Illinois a payday loan for 400% interest! This means a $500 payday loan will cost, in the end, $1,350. Check it out: view an Advance America Loan Rate Schedule
Predatory lending is one of the leading causes of the home foreclosure crisis across the United States. In Springfield, a IPA 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. IPA leaders led the earliest campaign against predatory lending with 2001 state regulations working with then State Senator Obama. Since then the organizing campaign accomplished landmark Mortgage Rescue Fraud legislation and continues to fight predatory lending.
Foreclosures continue to wreck our communities and families. We continue to hear from families who were told from their bank their payments were “lost”, payments would not be posted to their arrears but a “gift” to the bank, the investors refuse to modify their loan, and tens of thousands of dollars mysteriously added to their mortgage amount. The foreclosure epidemic is man-made, and if the Administration and big banks would listen, people can stop it. In 2010 the IPA network saved the homes of over 80 families, but systemic change has not been won.
Through a review of regional bank disclosure data, IPA discovered that many Illinois banks were failing to provide affordable housing loans to working class families, and disinvesting from lower income neighborhoods toward upper income communities. IPA used the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to challenge financial institutions to stop disinvestment practices toward reasonable policies to increase investment and credit in challenged neighborhoods. CRA homeownership investments provided $14 million toward working families purchasing their first home, and nearly $2 million refinancing bad predatory loans into safe and secure refinancing.
Living Wage surfaced as an organizing issue in Bloomington-Normal through a IPA “People-talking-to-people” meeting, January 2004. Since then IPA 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. Community support culminated in a landslide 70% favorable referendum supporting Living Wage. But the Bloomington City Council still can’t seem to figure out how to implement it.
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), IPA achieved the victory of a evening bus service pilot project set to kick-off summer, 2007. IPA leaders negotiated with transit staff and consultants to determine routes and most importantly, continued funding after the pilot expired in 2008.
The evening bus service project is a centerpiece of IPA organizing. The service itself is a qualitative and quantitative victory for community organizing and Springfield. Ridership exceeds all expectations and has become a permanent part of Springfield’s infrastructure.
Within the short walk between the new multi-million dollar Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the only home Abe ever owned, lived 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 IPA 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.
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.
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 IPA assisted immigrant Hispanic hotel cleaning men and women whose salaries were not paid to them in Bloomington and Normal, IL. Last year, IPA, 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.