UPDATE: Added video of the press conference.



Typically, not a lot of big news comes out of the county treasurer’s office. You know, they handle money. It’s an important thing, but not really all that exciting to those who decide what is news.

Not so with San Francisco’s Treasurer, José Cisneros. He helped to pioneer the working families credit, a local match of the earned income tax credit, and Bank On San Francisco, a program to get low income folks to get a bank account rather than using expensive check cashers.

And now, he’s got another plan, and it’s quite good.  It goes after the rather egregious interest rates charged by payday loan sharks operators.  They are small loans, less than $300, to tide you over until your next check. However, a typical fee for that $300 is $45, which, when paid back on time, results in an astronomical 459% APR. Yikes! Typically, people who get these loans end up going through at least 10 before they can break the cycle.

So, Treasurer Cisneros has a better idea, it’s called Payday Plus SF, and essentially it is the same thing, minus all the crazy fees. From an op-ed in the LA Times about it:

San Francisco and the credit unions are taking an important first step to solve the problem. The new loans will set up cash-strapped consumers to succeed, not fail. You can borrow up to $500, and, crucially, you don’t need to pay it all back two weeks later. You can spread out your payments up to six months. And the interest rate is 18%.

The participating credit unions will offer people opportunities to build their credit scores and take advantage of financial counseling. They worked together through the city’s Bank on San Francisco program, which pushes financial institutions to offer affordable products that work for lower-income consumers. (Anne Stuhldreher in LA Times)

Simply put, the program allows low-income earners a chance to get out of a tight situation without punishing them for their economic situation. What a radical concept.