No traditional bank account? Stimulus may be weeks away
NEW YORK — As the coronavirus crisis took hold, Akeil Smith’s employer slashed her work as a home health aide to 25 hours a week. Her $15-anhour salary no longer provided enough to pay her $700 monthly rent, and she had to visit food pantries.
While millions of U.S. workers have already received a quick relief payment from the federal Treasury through direct deposit, Smith is among millions of others without traditional bank accounts who must wait weeks for paper checks. When the checks finally arrive, this disproportionately black and Latino population often has little choice but to use expensive check-cashing services to get the money.
“I live check to check, and right now I need more groceries,” Smith, 35, said as she stood inside Payomatic, a small check-cashing store in a predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood.
In the six weeks since the pandemic shut down much of the U.S. economy, over 30 million American workers have filed for unemployment insurance. Congress passed a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package.
The government in April began sending $1,200 for each individual, $2,400 for each married couple and $500 more for each dependent child to poor and middle-class families across the United States. Wealthier families get either a reduced payout or nothing depending on their income.
To help smooth the delivery of the payments, the government launched an online portal for people to provide their banking information for direct deposit. But that system offered nothing to people without savings or checking accounts. Approximately 8.4 million U.S. households were considered “unbanked” in 2017, meaning that no one in the household had an account, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. An additional 24.2 million households were “underbanked,” meaning they might have a bank account but members of the household also used an alternative financial service for money orders, check cashing, international remittances, payday loans and pawnshop loans, often at high costs.
Some of those services have been criticized for being predatory and marketing to black and Hispanic communities, which are disproportionately unbanked. Roughly 17% of black households and 14% of Latino households were without a bank account in 2017, compared with just 3% of white households and 2.5% of Asian American households, the FDIC said.
Banking is a social justice issue with the potential to widen America’s racial wealth gap, said Cy Richardson, vice president of the National Urban League.
“Black America’s economic destiny exists on a razor’s edge right now,” Richardson said.
Advocates say the federal government should use the pandemic payments as an opportunity to bring more people into the banking system via Bank On accounts, which are FDIC insured, cost $5 or less a month and do not allow overdrafts or charge insufficient-fund fees. The accounts can be used for direct deposit, purchases and paying bills.
Otherwise, long lines at check-cashing stores could stretch into the fall and pose dangers to public health.
“There’s now a health component to being unbanked — people are going to have to take literal risks with their health, in order to receive and then spend these dollars,” said Jonathan Mintz, CEO of the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, which aims to get underserved Americans set up with affordable bank accounts.
The opportunity to attract customers with relief payments is not lost on check cashing and payday loan businesses, an $11.2 billion network of storefront locations in cities big and small.
In Brooklyn, B&H Check Cashing, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Bushwick, posts its rates for cashing checks. A $1,200 check, for example, costs $26.76 to cash.