Rich Man, Poor Man:

Luanne Stoltz and Maryann Olson share some things in common: Both are white women in their 50s who live in Portland and have undergone career changes. And both have taken advantage of Oregon's freewheeling payday-loan business. In fact, without payday loans, neither woman would be where she is today.

The similarities stop there.

Stoltz, 53, taught math at Aloha High for 20 years. Seven years ago, she retired from teaching and began making payday loans. Now, she owns two stores called Anyday's Payday, on Southwest Barbur Boulevard and Southeast 82nd Avenue. Stoltz also owns a Jaguar and lives in a West Hills home worth nearly $1 million.

Stoltz is a leader of one of Oregon's fastest-growing industries—making short-term loans to people with few financial options.

State figures show that the number of payday-loan stores in the state has doubled, to 365, in the past five years. Much of that growth has come from out-of-state companies flocking to Oregon, where, unlike in many other states, there is no cap on the interest rates lenders can charge.

For instance, Advance America of Spartanburg, S.C., which is the nation's largest payday lender with 2,598 shops, had no presence in Oregon in 2002. But, by the end of 2004, Advance America owned 42 payday stores here.

All told, in 2004 (the latest year for which the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services has figures), the state's payday lenders made 768,123 loans.

That's about one loan for every three Oregonians between the ages of 18 and 65 and nearly three times the number payday lenders made here in 1999.

Clearly, that demand exists for payday loans. "Customers thank me every day for the service we offer," Stoltz says. "It's really a very satisfying business."

Olson's experience leads her to a different conclusion.

A former nurse, Olson, 58, now lives in an adult foster home in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood in outer Southeast Portland with four others.

She hobbles awkwardly with the help of a walker and special shoes that cost more than $200. She says multiple sclerosis has twisted her feet, making one leg an inch and a half shorter than the other, and prevented her from working since 1986.

Two years ago, Olson's custom shoes wore out. She says she could not afford another pair. Nor could she borrow from friends or family. With no income other than a $643 monthly Social Security disability payment, she had few options. "Nobody wants to lend somebody like me money," Olson says. "I understand that."

OREGON'S RAPIDLY GROWING PAYDAY-LOAN BUSINESS has given lender Luanne Stoltz a lot to smile about.

THE BORROWER: Maryann Olson pays $507 of her $643 monthly income for a room in an adult foster home in outer Southeast Portland. Olson moved here four years ago from Arizona to be closer to family. Olson acknowledges the industry claim that payday lenders provide a service for people who need money quickly, but she says the price is simply too high. "When you see they're living high on the hog and you've got nothing, it's like they're nothing but legal loan sharks."

Stoltz does not dispute such calculations, although she and other payday lenders say it is misleading to represent the cost of a short-term loan on an annual percentage rate because borrowers typically don't keep the money for more than a few weeks—an argument critics say is irrelevant.

"It's absolutely ridiculous," says Angela Martin, a public-policy advocate for the Oregon Food Bank. "The use of annual percentage rates allows consumers to compare the costs of different types of borrowing and is the most basic tenet of fair lending practices."

Some people might argue that payday lenders charge exorbitant interest rates because the risk of lending to people with poor credit histories is great. That risk-reward calculation is the reason people who have previously declared bankruptcy often pay far higher interest on credit-card debt than do those with good credit.

Yet statistics collected by the state show that payday borrowers nearly always pay their debts.

In 2004, for instance, state figures show that payday lenders collected on about 96 percent of the loans they made in Oregon—which means the payday borrowers default at about the same rate at those with college loans (4.2 percent, according to federal Department of Education figures) even though they pay interest rates 50 to 100 times higher.

Nonetheless, Stoltz says the focus should be on the service that payday lenders provide rather than interest rates. Borrowers would not have signed up for nearly three-quarters of a million payday loans last year, she says, if they were unhappy with the product.

Others have a different view.

Groups ranging from OSPIRG and the Oregon Food Bank to Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, the labor union SEIU and Our Oregon, a union-backed workers'-rights group (all of whom are teaming up on a proposed statewide ballot measure that would, amont other restrictions, cap annual interest rates at 36 percent) have criticized an industry they say exploits people who have no alternatives.

Many other states, including Washington and California, have capped interest rates or applied various restrictions. Some states, including North Carolina and Georgia, have recently driven payday lenders out altogether.

THE LENDER: Payday lending is a family affair for Luanne Stoltz, who lives in a 5,196-square-foot West Hills home with an assessed value of $818,000. Stoltz's adult children work for her in the lending business, and her sister owns four payday shops in Washington. "I was always interested in having my own small business," Stoltz says. "My dad owned collection agencies and a payday-loan business in Washington."

Periodically over the past decade, elected officials in Oregon, mostly in the Legislature, have tried to rein in payday lenders. But in the past couple of months, local officials have gone after the industry with the zeal of collection agents.

Two weeks ago, the Portland City Council voted to place some of the first real restrictions on the industry in Oregon, including giving borrowers a 24-hour window to cancel their loans and allowing the establishment of payment plans instead of the current all-or-nothing repayment system. (Local officials lack the legal authority to cap interest rates.)

Gresham passed an identical measure last week, and Troutdale will soon consider a similar resolution. Even Oregon House Speaker Karen Minnis (R-Wood Village) seems to have gotten religion.

Minnis faces a tough re-election battle in an East County district chock-full of payday lenders. Democrats blame her for killing anti-payday legislation last session, but she is now making noises about addressing payday loans in a special legislative session.

Minnis gets more payday loan-related political contributions than any other lawmaker, according to the Oregon Money In Politics Research Action Project. Her spokesman, Chuck Deister, says the speaker is acting now to bring a statewide solution rather than a crazy quilt of local rules. He adds that payday contributions have not influenced his boss. "Nobody has purchased the speaker's vote," Deister says.

Rather than wading too far into what promises to be a bruising political fight, WW decided to take a closer look at situations of the people who are on both sides of the fight: the lenders and the borrowers.

^BORROWING TROUBLE

The rise of payday lending in Oregon parallels an increasing reliance on the Oregon Food Bank, which distributes emergency food boxes containing a three- to five-day supply of food to those in need.

SOURCES: OREGON FOOD BANK: OREGON DEPARTMENT OF CONSUMER AND BUSINESS SERVICES