News Release

UNC-Chapel Hill poverty center to host
expert panel on the high cost of being poor

CHAPEL HILL - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and the UNC Center on Banking and Finance, both based at the School of Law, will co-host a panel discussion on Wednesday, Oct. 11, to explore the ways that being poor in America can be expensive.

The event, free and open to the public, and will be held from 4-6 p.m. in the auditorium of the School of Social Work's Tate-Turner-Kuralt building. Panelists will examine how the poor are affected by the issues of predatory lending, sub-par banking services, rent-to-own stores, high credit costs and the lack of access to affordable goods.

Panelists Rod Watson and Jonathan Epstein of the Buffalo News recently wrote a series of articles that explored these issues in upstate New York. Their work prompted legislative discussion and potential action on behalf of the working poor. Watson and Epstein will explain how these issues affect the people they interviewed in their series and how this coverage informed the New York State Assembly.

Other panelists include Mark Pearce, deputy commissioner of the Office of the Commissioner of Banks and former president of the Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, who will describe the regulatory approach to the relevant issues in North Carolina; Michael Barr, professor at the University of Michigan School of Law, who will discuss his large-scale empirical study of financial services for low- and moderate-income households; and John Herrera, chair of the Latino Community Credit Union, who will discuss how these issues affect the Latino community.

Lissa Broome, law professor and director of the UNC Center on Banking and Finance, will moderate the session. John Edwards, director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, will serve as the lead questioner for the panelists.

The Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity brings together scholars, policymakers, lawyers, community leaders and students to further research and policymaking on issues relating to poverty, work and opportunity. Established in February 2005, the center supports monthly panels of experts, hosts discussions and conferences. The center is also filming a short documentary on the working poor, expected to be released this fall, and is sponsoring a series of policy briefs from prominent UNC faculty on various topics related to poverty.

For more information about the event, please contact the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at (919) 843-8796, or email povertycenter@unc.edu.

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School of Law contact: Matt Marvin, (919) 962-4125 or mmarvin@email.unc.edu