FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 5, 2019
CONTACT: Milena Paez, 916-470-8921
Los Angeles, CA — This Saturday, NextGen California and its partners, the Student Borrower Protection Center, Student Debt Crisis, Consumer Reports, and Young Invincibles continue their
Free My Future: Student Loan Debt Week of Action by hosting a Student Loan Debt Summit in downtown Los Angeles. The Summit will overview the growing extent of the student debt crisis as well as provide real-time resources that can offer immediate support such as: 1-on-1 debt counseling and staff available to answer participant’s questions. Emphasis will also be placed on advocacy efforts around the first-of-its-kind legislative effort being pursued in California – the California Borrower Bill of Rights, AB 376 authored by Assemblymember Mark Stone (D-Monterey Bay). The event will close with a comedy show headlined by comedian Loni Love.
Free My Future: Student Loan Debt Summit – This event is open to credentialed media.
Access to mult box is not guaranteed, media is encouraged to plan accordingly.
Event time: 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Date: Saturday, December 7, 2019
Location: Hudson Loft, 1200 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Media Pre-set: 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Media Access: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Talent Available to media: 2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Speakers:
Confirmed Public Officials in Attendance:
Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (10:30 a.m.)
UC Regent and Former Speaker of the California Assembly, John Perez (2:00 p.m.)
About The Student Borrower Bill of Rights, AB 376 (Stone)
AB 376, the California Student Borrower Bill of Rights, will create new rights for all California student loan borrowers and establish special protections for military personnel and their families, nurses, teachers, and the disabled community. The legislation would require student loan companies to train their staff to understand these rights and create strong new consumer protections to prevent student loan companies from deceiving and misleading student loan borrowers. This bill also creates new penalties for companies that trick borrowers out of their repayment and public loan forgiveness rights and, for the first time, gives individual borrowers new legal remedies to address predatory and abusive practices.
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About Co-Sponsors:
NextGen California is a non-profit organization dedicated to working on California legislative, budgetary, regulatory, and programmatic issues. Originally founded in 2014 to focus on climate and environmental policy, in recent years, NextGen California has broadened its scope to advance solutions to various economic and social justice issues. Specifically, our policy portfolio now encompasses topics such as: criminal justice and immigration; healthcare and food insecurity; mental health and voting rights; student loan debt and the Census; veterans issues and consumer protections; and affordable housing and environmental justice.
The Student Borrower Protection Center is a nonprofit organization focused on alleviating the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. SBPC engages in advocacy, policymaking, and litigation strategy to rein in industry abuses, protect borrowers’ rights, and advance economic opportunity for the next generation of students. Led by the team of former federal regulators that directed oversight of the student loan market at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, SBPC exposes harmful and illegal practices in the student loan industry, drives impact litigation, advocates on behalf of student loan borrowers in Washington and in state capitals, and promotes progressive policy change. SBPC accomplishes these goals by partnering with leaders at all levels of government and throughout the nonprofit sector.
Student Debt Crisis is a non-profit (501c4) organization dedicated to fundamentally reforming student debt and higher education loan policies. Student Debt Crisis (SDC) takes a personal approach to member needs—working directly with borrowers to understand their challenges and fears, repayment obstacles and frustrations. SDC tackles the challenges of loan refinancing and consumer protection policies with media and legislators, as well as educating borrowers and higher education experts with lectures, webinars and special events.
Consumer Reports is an expert, independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. Consumer Reports works for pro-consumer policies in the areas of financial services, as well as telecommunications, health care, food and product safety, energy, telecommunications, privacy and data security, and competition and consumer choice, among other issues, in Washington, DC, in the states, and in the marketplace. Consumer Reports is the world’s largest independent product-testing organization, using its dozens of labs, auto test center, and survey research department to rate thousands of products and services annually. Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has over 6 million subscribers to its magazine, website, and other publications.
Young Invincibles (YI) is a national nonprofit, non-partisan advocacy and research organization working with and for young adults to address the generation’s most pressing economic challenges by amplifying the voices of young adults in the political process. With a focus on higher education, health care, workforce development, and civic engagement, our work is guided by the belief that every young person – regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status, or any other factor – deserves a fair chance to achieve their goals and reach financial stability.