In response to the General Assembly’s failure to re-authorize payday lending in North Carolina this session, retired Carolina Panther wide receiver Willie Green, a vocal proponent of the unsuccessful legislation, will close one of his check-cashing stores in Gastonia and continue opening businesses in Kentucky, which allows the loan service.
“If North Carolina doesn’t want my tax dollars, I’ll take it elsewhere,” Green said of his businesses. The Gastonia location of America’s Cash Express is the third of four stores the entrepreneur says he was forced to close because of the impact of North Carolina’s on-and-off law covering the controversial loan program. He closed two stores after legislation that allowed the short-term loans expired in 2001.
Although he will close a Gastonia outlet in November, Green will continue to operate a second store there, but he predicts a gloomy future. “If a bill is not passed next May, I’ll be forced to close that one down as well,” he said of his last North Carolina store.
Green is particularly concerned for his employees, who are caught in the middle of the legislative battle. Each of Green’s store closures puts three to four workers in the unemployment line. He said he’s proud to provide jobs that pay beginning tellers $8 to $9 per hour. Green especially enjoys mentoring employees who dream of following in his footsteps. Several years ago Green sold a check-cashing store in Hickory to one of his managers and financed the deal himself. The store went out of business, and Green attributes the failure mainly to the 2001 payday-lending ban.
The ban didn’t affect lenders affiliated with federally chartered banks; they were still allowed to offer the loans. However, it left more than 200 smaller lenders such as Green and his manager-turned-owner out in the cold, unable to provide the service in which customers receive cash by writing a post-dated check to be repaid with their next paycheck. The lender gives the customer the amount of the post-dated check minus a fee. On the recipient’s payday, the lender deposits the check to pay off the loan, keeping the fee as its profit on the transaction.
Critics say the process traps lower-income households in a cycle of debt. Green says that it’s a legitimate financial option the marketplace demands, and that customers freely choose. “The government should not tell people how to run their lives. I’m a strong believer in people making their own decisions,” he said.
North Carolina’s economic loss is Kentucky’s gain. In a strategic move last year to stabilize and grow his business, Green purchased a check-cashing store in Kentucky, where payday lending is legal. He has since opened two more locations. Green’s business instincts proved correct, since his efforts on behalf of North Carolina’s 2003 payday-lending bill were unsuccessful. He thinks he was out-maneuvered by consumer groups who used arguments he contends were misleading about the loans and the lenders.
“They have deliberately put out misinformation about us taking advantage of poor people and minorities,” he said. “They wouldn’t have an argument if they told the truth.”
Green said a look at the profile of the average payday loan recipient proves his point. He says the typical customer makes $25,000 to $45,000 per year, and many own a home. Key opposition came from organizations representing people earning less than $25,000 a year, a segment that makes up just 15 percent of payday customers, Green said. “They took a small portion of our customer base and made it sound like all our customers. I’ve sat down with them (the opponents) and they can’t show me complaints” from the $40,000-plus group, he said.
Green also places responsibility for the bill’s defeat with the national leadership of the NAACP. Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the NAACP, adamantly opposed payday lending and sent state legislators a letter denouncing the bill. Green, an NAACP member, mailed and faxed letters to Bond asking for a meeting to discuss the issue. He offered to fly to the group’s headquarters in Baltimore at his own expense, but Bond didn’t respond to his overtures. “That’s an insult to me,” Green said.
Despite his frustration and setbacks, he is upbeat. Green, 37, who was signed by the Panthers in 1995 during an eight-season career in the National Football League, applies to his business the lessons of perseverance and hard work he says he learned playing professional football. “Not everything is going to go your way. I’ve been through it. I don’t expect any handouts,” he said.
Martinez is associate editor at Carolina Journal.