Hero of the Week

He leads charge against unfair lending practices 
Frank Norton, Staff Writer

Peter Skillern was a menacing defensive end at Tucker High School in Georgia. He ran fast, hit hard and regularly toppled ball carriers who dwarfed his 150-pound-when-fully-suited frame.

"Yeah, I was smaller, but I guess I was meaner, or at least more aggressive," Skillern, 43, says. "It’s really about having the ability to hit harder than your weight, and your opponent."

It’s that ability — or will — to whack opponents no matter their size that has made Skillern a formidable force as head of the nonprofit Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina.

In that role, Skillern makes a living sticking up for low-income borrowers and chasing unscrupulous lenders out of poor neighborhoods. Under his leadership, the Community Reinvestment Association fights what he sees as unfair practices among banks, predatory mortgage lenders and payday lenders — those who make high-interest short-term loans to people between paychecks. His targets have included major banks such as Citigroup, Bank of America and Wachovia Bank, and he was among those instrumental in getting payday lending banished from North Carolina this year.

"There are tremendous imbalances in the financial field between consumers with money and people without," Skillern says. "And we are all called on to be social witnesses."

Now that North Carolina is one of a dozen states that have outlawed payday lenders, Skillern says he will lobby federal regulators for reform nationally. (more…)

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 27th, 2006 at 9:52 am and is filed under Hero of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.