Consumer Education
It is important for people to know how to identify predatory lending practices and how to avoid them. We are continuing a media campaign to raise awareness and educate the most vulnerable consumers throughout the Dayton area. The residential real-estate market in filled with confusing terms and increasingly complicated transactions. Making borrowing concept easy to understand is one of our primary concerns. We think this will make the deceptive practices used in predatory lending more apparent and, ultimately, uncommon.

Bank Participation
By working with local community banks, the PLS project hopes to increase the availability of traditional loans within minority neighborhoods so that more people can enjoy honest and affordable mortgages. We also support and promote alternative loan programs designed to help at-risk borrowers and uneducated consumers. With the help and participation of the banking industry, many financially sound loans can be developed and designed in a more equal way.

Re-Regulation & Legislation
Local and state governments can be great agents in stopping the incidents of predatory lending. By enforcing existing laws more fully and making new mandates against predatory lending practices, these fraudulent loans can be stopped. In addition to helping public policy makers understand what predatory lending is, we are working with our local officials to add new information to existing laws as well as drafting new laws to prevent and protect people against loan flipping, prepayment penalties, and fraudulent appraisals, to name a few. Our decision-makers need to know about predatory lending's relevance to many of society's biggest problems: general lack of minority business ownership; declining property values & deterioration of the tax base; urban sprawl; crime; and general neighborhood destabilization.