Fall is on the way, and school is back in session. And THIS year, the summer heat and student loans are making big headlines. On this episode of Our Body Politic, host and creator Farai Chideya speaks with Neel Dhanesha from Heatmap who discusses the underestimated yet deadliest weather crisis - HEAT. We’re also joined by climate activist Dany Sigwalt on how to build a climate movement that includes BIPOC voices. Then co-host Karen Grigsby Bates, who is a founding member of NPR’s Code Switch team speaks with Persis Yu, the deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, about how the most vulnerable borrowers still recovering from the effects of a pandemic will be able to meet the demands of loan repayments.
Farai Chideya [00:00:04] Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you haven't yet, remember to follow this podcast on your podcatcher of choice like Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have time, please leave us a review. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. You can also reach out to us on social @OurBodyPolitic. We are here for you, with you and because of you, so keep letting us know what's on your mind. We'd also love for you to join in financially supporting the show if you are able. You can find out more at ourbodypolitic.com/donate. Thanks for listening.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. Fall is on the way and school is back in session. And this year, the summer heat and student loans are making big headlines. So sharpen those pencils, because we're talking to experts about how these crises impact communities of color and what we can do about it. We turn first to Hawaii. President Biden landed there 13 days after the devastating fires on the island of Maui. After touring the damage, he joined community members at an event in the town of Lahaina.
President Biden [00:01:14] Many of you have lost family. Not even sure where some are. I've had a similar experience. I was 29 years old. I got a phone call from my fire department saying they had to come home immediately. There had been an accident. We're having a little bit of a sense of like driving, wondering what in God's name is it going to be like when I get to the hospital. Only worse than losing someone is not sure whether you’ve lost someone.
Farai Chideya [00:01:43] More than 100 people were killed and scores are still unaccounted for. Many of those people had very little warning, if any. Joining me now is Neel Dhanesha, founding staff writer at Heat Map, a new media company focused on climate and energy. Welcome to Our Body Politic, Neel.
Neel Dhanesha [00:02:00] Thanks for having me.
Farai Chideya [00:02:02] So extreme weather just hitting the country and hitting the world. And in the United States, people I think are wrapping their brains around the fact that this is a fact that extreme weather and extreme heat are going to be with us for a while. But let's talk about Hawaii. First of all, what are some of the climate events that contributed to these fires?
Neel Dhanesha [00:02:24] There are a combination of events. One of the events goes back a long way in Hawaii's history, which comes down to when native plants were replaced with invasive species. When plantations were up in that region and these plants are not as resistant to fire as the native plants would have been. And historically, that hasn't been too much of an issue. But this year it's been really hot and that has dried out plants and made them really ripe for ignition. And so that kind of contributed to what we're seeing today, but also what scientists call compounding events. And so we've also seen reports that winds from a nearby hurricane fanned the flames of these fires and made them travel more quickly across these grasses that were burning more quickly. And so when you put these events together, you sort of get what scientists have been warning of for a long time, which is multiple climate events coming together and creating a really pretty nasty set of circumstances that have now led to the deadliest wildfires in recent American history.
Farai Chideya [00:03:28] When I started looking at Hawaii, one of the things I thought about was essentially colonialism and industrialization. And Hawaii was a sovereign kingdom, which the U.S. overthrew to take the land. And I think about all these different climates, including Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Flooding was related to oil and energy providers digging through the wetlands and industrialization and or colonialism seemed to be these long range undergirding factors of what's happening today. But it's also something that's kind of hard to talk about because it's like, well, this thing happened like 100 years ago and the checks coming due today. Do you think we have the capacity to understand that?
Neel Dhanesha [00:04:15] Well, I think I think we have the capacity to. I think the question is whether or not people are willing to engage with this question. If you look around the country, the fingerprints of colonialism are evident throughout all kinds of climate disasters. I mean, in Hawaii, these plants were introduced on plantations that were set up by colonizers who wanted to bring livestock that weren't native to Hawaii, to the region. And so, you know, these weren't things that people were doing before the white colonizers came in Louisiana, like you mentioned, after that one decision that was made to ignore local knowledge of the indigenous people is that we've seen all this construction happen to try and stave off the Mississippi River from flooding. We've still seen those levees break. We've seen things like Katrina happen and affect low income communities and communities of color in particular. And so I think these conversations are becoming more accepted at some level because you see things like this happen. I think especially when these disasters happen, you see us collectively kind of reckoning with what led to them. But I think like this conversation, as with so many of our conversations, is so wrapped up in the politics of the country and the unwillingness of many people to reckon with that history. And so, yes, I see it. I think we can do it. I think it often requires us to get uncomfortable in a way that I think people don't really necessarily like doing.
Farai Chideya [00:05:37] Yeah, absolutely. You know, heat events are a part of your work at Heat Map. What are some of the touch points of how heat has affected American life?
Neel Dhanesha [00:05:47] It's affected American life in so many ways. And I think what I've been trying to do this summer is sort of keep an eye on how exactly it affects us. So one of the things we did is we launched the thing called the Heat Tracker, which is just doing something very simple. It's keeping track of the notable heat events from this summer. And that's been a really interesting exercise and kind of shocking, frankly. But another thing that we've been collectively doing is sort of trying to see how people around the country are trying to live with it. And so I recently wrote about how labor unions are starting to think about how to protect their workers from extreme heat. We saw, for example, earlier this year, just a couple of months ago, UPS drivers won a historic agreement when they threatened to strike. And what they got was air conditioning in their vans because the heat has become the sort of galvanizing force for so many people. And we're also seeing it in the medical setting. Heat affects the human body in many ways. It has all kinds of health effects. And I recently talked to some doctors who have been taking it upon themselves to educate their patients about heat and about climate change's effects on their health. And so more and more, I think we're seeing people really recognize heat not as the thing that like comes with the summer and lets you go to the beach, but as something that can actually harm you and forces us to rethink how we live our lives outside. Yeah.
Farai Chideya [00:07:06] What happens to our bodies when we overheat? And who's the most vulnerable?
Neel Dhanesha [00:07:11] Yeah. So the people who are the most vulnerable are either elderly or have preexisting medical conditions. Kids also don't do fantastic in the heat, but they do better than elderly folks do. And this is just because what happens for a body is kind of gruesome. Our hearts start pumping faster, we start sweating more. And sweat is the way that our bodies release heat. And as the temperatures get higher, it's harder for our body to thermoregulation, especially as the temperatures outside start reaching the temperatures inside our bodies. And the more we sweat, the more we lose both water and salt. And so we get dehydrated and our body doesn't have the nutrients and needs to function healthily. And so our hearts start trying to pump blood faster to try and get those nutrients to more parts of the body. But especially as we get more as the nutrients get out, it becomes harder and harder. And so because your heart breaking faster if you're elderly, that's a particular concern. But as you are exposed to the heat for longer, you're going to reach a point where you just kind of can't fairly regulate anymore and you start bringing signs of heat exhaustion or even heat stroke. And historically, people have thought that the best solution is water. We're actually seeing more and more that the solution is the combination of water and salt, because we need to replenish the source that we've lost.
Farai Chideya [00:08:31] So I want to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. President Biden was in New Mexico speaking about the Inflation Reduction Act that passed last year. So let's hear a bit from that speech.
President Biden [00:08:42] So we passed a significant climate legislation not only that moves us away from fossil fuels to cleaner technologies like wind, but it means we're going to make things and new technology here in America.
Farai Chideya [00:08:56] So what are the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act?
Neel Dhanesha [00:09:00] Oh, there's a lot. The Inflation Reduction Act or the IRA has been called essentially the biggest piece of climate legislation ever. And that's because it just provides so much money for so many decarbonizing technologies like solar panels and heat pumps and electric vehicles, and also incentivizes clean energy jobs, especially union jobs. Biden's been beating the union drum for clean energy for quite a while. And I think taken together, all of these incentives, whether they're at the home level or whether they're trying to make the grid greener or whether they're trying to bring jobs that, you know, revolve around building clean energy technology, it's huge. It's a big shift in how the country spends its money. And that's really exciting to see.
Farai Chideya [00:09:44] And let's end on a note that certainly was news to me and to many other people of young people and a case in Montana. So more than a dozen young people in Montana sued their state for not addressing climate change in the case held versus Montana. The young people won. So tell me about this case and whether or not it will have an impact.
Neel Dhanesha [00:10:12] Yeah, this is a really exciting case and it was the first case subsequently to win of its kind. And the people I talked to are really excited about this case. And that's because the courts are an angle of approaching climate change that historically hasn't worked too well. There have been similar lessons in the past that well, kind of been dismissed out of hand. But what this lawsuit did in Montana, it was in state level court, not federal court, which is important because it was specifically a group of young activists who were suing the state over denying them their right to a clean and healthy environment that was guaranteed in the Montana constitution. And this constitutional provision is something that's unique to Montana. There are other states that have similar provisions like New York and Pennsylvania, but because they were suing over this particular constitutional right, they had a really strong ground to stand on. And the judge agreed. And the judge said that like they were being denied of their constitutional right because the Montana legislature had passed some very openly climate unfriendly bills, let's say, that didn't allow for energy projects to take their climate impact into mind. And so this lawsuit, it's a bit of a blueprint for people who might be thinking of doing something similar. Our Children's Trust, which is the nonprofit law firm that represented the youth who took this case, the of course, they one has filed lawsuits in all 50 states, including Hawaii, where a similar case is allowed to go forward. And now this win isn't the end of this case. This will almost certainly be appealed and they'll litigate their case in Montana Supreme Court. And that's going to be a whole different level of fight than what they've had so far. But I think especially for kids who are too young to vote, you know, this provides a really important method of, you know, franchise, Like they have a voice here in a way that they don't have elsewhere. And at the end of the day, like it's these kids who are going to be here. The effects of climate change the worst. And so the fact that they finally have a way to maybe effect some changes is really exciting.
Farai Chideya [00:12:17] So life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and climate health or something like that. Yeah.
Neel Dhanesha [00:12:23] Well, you know, I mean, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness all require a good climate.
Farai Chideya [00:12:27] Indeed. Well, Neel, thanks so much for joining us.
Neel Dhanesha [00:12:30] Thank you for having me, this was great.
Farai Chideya [00:12:32] That was mailed in Asia. Founding staff writer at Heat Map.
On November 19th, 2020, the day Georgia confirmed Biden's presidential win, climate activist Dany Sigwalt and a coalition of community activists, unions and newly elected members of Congress held a rally at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in DC. Here's Dany on that day.
Dany Sigwalt [00:13:00] Folks in my generation, millennials and Gen Z, just don't have a vision for the future that seems familiar or normal. So President-Elect Biden, I'm asking you today, please support a Green New Deal and support young people and Black people and brown people and indigenous people in this work because we're the ones who got you elected and we're the ones who are holding all of humanity in our hearts and not just our individual interests.
Farai Chideya [00:13:28] Dany Sigwalt is a climate activist and managing director of the Green Leadership Trust, an organization working to, quote, build an environment and conservation movement that wins. We're joined by her now to talk about her journey to climate justice and how she thinks President Biden's largest climate legislation measures up to what activists like her want for our future. Welcome, Dany.
Dany Sigwalt [00:13:50] Hi, thanks for having me.
Farai Chideya [00:13:52] There has been a lot of news out of Montana, out of Ecuador. But what is your story of how you connected to doing work on the survival of not just the human species, but many other species, too?
Dany Sigwalt [00:14:06] Yeah, absolutely. So I tell people that if they know anything about me, it should be that I'm from Washington, D.C., Like I grew up in D.C. in the nineties when it was the murder capital, when we were at the height of the crack epidemic. And I grew up with a certain amount of class privilege as a mixed race kid living between worlds, right? So I very much saw the material differences between the way that my white classmates at private schools lived and the supports that they had in their lives and my neighbors and my family. So I grew up with a very, very clear lens into racial injustice, even though I didn't know what it meant at the time. And I started to build a career around it. Like racial justice is at the center of the work that I do, and it always will be. That manifests in so many different ways. So I worked in education for a while. I did housing work, I did antiwar work. I was in the Occupy movement, like always working to draw those lines and those connections between racial justice and trying to create a world that lives up to the promises of this country has told us for so long. And in 2016, I was trying to figure out how to build a career, like a real career in the kind of nonprofit sector. Mm hmm. And I was really, really lucky to find a woman of color led organization that was able to receive me and be open to the insights that I was able to bring as a Black woman activist.
Farai Chideya [00:15:39] So explain a little bit about how the work of climate justice fits into more traditional conservation based environmental movement.
Dany Sigwalt [00:15:51] Yeah, so I recently learned from my friend Tykee James that the birding community, people who go look at birds got its start because people were worried about the decrease in the number of birds and that existed like, I don't know, in the mid 19th century, maybe because white ladies needed the feathers for their fancy hats and they were worried that they would no longer have pretty feathers for their fancy hats. So the conservation movement has just really been rooted in preserving kind of an idyllic natural landscape for people with wealth, white folks to be able to enjoy nature. And it treats us really as if we are not of the earth. And the goal is to have as little impact as possible, but especially in Turtle Island and in the Americas. Right? Like we look at the historical documents of when colonizers came in, people would look at our landscapes and know how lush they were and how abundant with food they were and how wonderful these natural landscapes. Whereas if people hadn't been cultivating that for centuries or millennia, climate movement has really been focused on things like reducing the energy emissions and how we do that within a political landscape of what already exists, thinking about things like carbon credits or tax credits to all of these massive companies that are polluting. So incentivize not polluting, and it's just inherently flawed because it really misses the mark of the ways that we need to figure out to live in alignment with the natural world. It's not a question of how do we continue to maintain the status quo that has caused so much harm. It's a question of how are we shifting our frameworks or mentalities, our thought processes, our ways of living to match the offerings of our planet and what it's able to give us.
Farai Chideya [00:17:43] So I was living in New York when Hurricane Sandy hit, and one thing that stuck with me out of many, many things was that Occupy Sandy was more effective than the Red Cross at delivering aid. What does mutual aid mean and why is it important in climate?
Dany Sigwalt [00:18:00] Yeah, mutual aid means connection and sharing resources. That's it. Occupy Sandy was incredible, and I've learned a lot from the folks who led a lot of that work about networks and how we build and sustain networks because it's a lot easier to move resources. The bigger our networks are and the better connected we are. And I think mutual aid is also largely about helping folks understand that the systems and infrastructure that we have in place, whether it's FEMA and federal government, state government, these big international NGOs are ill equipped and are failing us in these moments of crisis and that we deserve better and that people in their communities know what their people need the most and be empowered to take care of our people and not just depend on outsiders to do it.
Farai Chideya [00:18:53] In Montana, a group of young people sued the state and won, saying, You're promoting fossil fuel interests ahead of our interests. In Ecuador, citizens decided to leave oil in the ground, even though, putatively it would have strengthened the country's economic health, but it would not have strengthened the overall health of the society. What do victories like that mean to you, and is it enough?
Dany Sigwalt [00:19:23] Those victories bring so much joy to my heart. It's so great to see people standing up and resisting the status quo of extracting fossil fuels from the Earth, but also just extracting from our communities and poisoning ourselves and the future. And that is it enough question is, is hard for me to begin to figure out how to answer because it has to start somewhere. Right, no, it's obviously not enough. But think about all the young people who are like so energized and so excited about Montana.
Farai Chideya [00:19:52] Yeah. Now, what about the Inflation Reduction Act?
Dany Sigwalt [00:19:56] Yeah, I mean, the Inflation Reduction Act is huge. Right. So there are parts about it that are like, yes, let's do this. This is great. There are other parts of the funding stream. So I'm just like, This is not a good idea. This makes me really nervous. Specifically, what I talk about that I'm talking about carbon capture technology and carbon pipelines, which are very dangerous and not proven technology. Yet we're still investing billions of dollars into it. There are also possibilities with it in that if we're able to really cultivate it and figure out how to invest some of those resources into natural solutions like growing prairie grasses, reforestation and things of that nature could be very helpful. I really wish that there were more opportunities for lower income folks to be able to benefit from the IRA. A lot of the tax advantages are going to property owners, which is a problem, and I think that also it would be great if there was more funding or more energy going to community owned utilities. So there's been a big push in New York and in Vermont recently around community owned power, which means that folks in communities are able to make decisions about energy infrastructure and therefore will be less interested in extracting fossil fuels from the planet because renewables are actually a lot cheaper. And so there are a lot of ways that we can move that are more community oriented in terms of our climate solutions. The IRA isn't necessarily doing that because it was kind of toeing the line between the interests of the fossil fuel industry and all of these other massive corporations and the climate with not that much investment in individual people and community. I wish there had been more, but it's so much better than nothing. So, you know, just like that question you were asking before about is it enough? It feels very much like the answer is no. And I find hope in the fact that it is almost certainly just the beginning.
Farai Chideya [00:21:57] I love it. Dany Sigwalt, climate activist, author and managing director of the Green Leadership Trust. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Dany Sigwalt [00:22:05] Thank you, Farai.
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Farai Chideya [00:22:15] We turn next to another hot topic for the fall student loan repayments with Karen Grigsby Bates, Our Body Politic co-host and founding member of NPR's Code Switch team. Let's listen.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:22:27] Student loan debt looms over the heads of millions of Americans. Many hope to receive much needed debt relief when President Biden was elected into office. His administration came up with the student loan forgiveness program in 2022, which would have canceled $430 billion of collective debt. However, the Supreme Court struck that program down this summer. So how will the country's most vulnerable borrowers, still recovering from the effects of a pandemic be able to meet the demands of loan repayments? Joining me now is Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel of the Student Borrower Protection Center. She's a nationally recognized expert on student loan law and has over a decade of hands-on experience representing student loan borrowers. Persis, welcome to the show.
Persis Yu [00:23:16] Hello. Thank you so much for having me here.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:23:18] It's our pleasure. So, catch us up, what would the student loan forgiveness program have accomplished and why did the Supreme Court strike it down?
Persis Yu [00:23:27] As you mentioned, federal student loan payments were paused during the pandemic. And so back in August of 2022, President Biden made an announcement that said that he was going to do two big things. One was to provide student loan cancellation of $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year or families with $250,000. And if borrowers received a Pell Grant, they would get an additional $10,000 of relief added to that. The second thing that he was going to do was then to implement a new repayment plan to lower payments so that those folks who had debt would have a more affordable option going forward. But thinking about the cancellation piece, the reason why this was so critical is because the data that exists in the student loan portfolio about previous disasters demonstrated that borrowers who have had their loans paused, experienced high levels of financial distress when those payments turned back on. We've seen this during the hurricanes Harvey and Maria during previous wildfires, for example. Those are other times when the payment system has been paused and they have resulted in spikes in default and delinquency rates. When those payments resume and those defaults in delinquency rates have very bad consequences for borrowers. It means that they could have their wages taken, their Social Security taken their earned income tax credits taken. And so the cancellation program was intended to kind of ward off those bad consequences of what will happen when folks, frankly, can't afford to turn their payments back on.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:24:55] So let's turn to your own story. You've been deeply involved in advocating for student loan borrowers, particularly for low income borrowers, for a while now. Walk us through your journey to student loan law and borrower advocacy, because I'm imagining you're not teaching a lot of that in law school.
Persis Yu [00:25:15] No, not at all. When I left law school, I went to work for a legal services program in western New York. I graduated from law school during the foreclosure crisis. And so there were a lot of consumer issues, but a lot of focus was being put on, you know, keeping folks in their homes, rightfully so. But what wound up happening is that there were a lot of other consumer issues that were kind of coming to the surface. We worked with folks who couldn't get housing because of problems with their credit reports. We worked with folks experiencing really abusive debt collection. And frankly, that's where I saw a lot of the student loan borrowers in the first place, older borrowers who are on Social Security, retirement or disability, having those benefits taken from them. And so this is somewhat how I started the journey into working with folks who are experiencing these really devastating debt collection tactics and helping them navigate the system because they had disabilities that rose to the level of cancellation, but nobody told them or they went to a fraudulent school and they had the right to have their loans canceled through those programs. But again, nobody told them or they were very low income and they just needed help and nobody helped them walk through these, frankly, Byzantine systems that we have created for student loan borrowers for. The programs are incredibly complicated. And the companies that are being hired by the Department of Education to help folks get through the system have not been helping folks get into the programs that they need to really keep their loans in good standing, in affordable repayment plans. When I started, the student loan market hadn't crossed the $1 trillion mark. We know that we are racing towards $2 trillion now. The problems with student loans are just escalating and they are growing rapidly. In many ways, the federal student loan system has a lot of different programs that are meant to be protective of borrowers. For example, the disability discharge program that says that if you have a disability, that means that you can't participate in the workforce, that you will have your loans canceled. We have these income driven payment plans that will allow you to peg your payment to your income. And then after a certain amount of time to ensure that you're not trapped in a lifetime of debt, the remainder will be canceled after a certain period. Public service loan forgiveness again. But these programs take work to get into. They take paperwork. They take income, documentation. And frankly, what we've seen over the last decade or more is that the servicers who, again, have been hired by the Department of Education to walk borrowers through these programs don't really have the incentives to do all that work. One of the problems that we run into is putting somebody in a forbearance which stops of these payments. And so borrowers think, Oh, this is great in the moment, I don't have to make payments. My servicer said, I don't have to make payments. But what they don't realize is during this time, interest is going to accrue. We're not going to get any closer to resolving the loan. And borrowers don't know what they don't know. And you know, what I've seen over a decade of my career is that student loan borrowers are struggling financially. They are mostly middle class, working class folks just trying to get an education and get ahead. And they're struggling to make those monthly payments and do the other things that they need to do with their lives. One of the reasons why legal services providers are providing this service is because a lot of low income folks don't know how to navigate the system and they don't have the time to. Even simple problems take a long time to work their way through.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:28:26] Let's pull back a little bit and talk about what people need to understand about the impact of student loan debt like overall. Tell me first about individuals and families and then about the nation, because those are concentric ripples, right?
Persis Yu [00:28:41] Yeah, No, I mean, I think that's such an important point. Right. A huge percentage of folks are holding this student loan debt. But of course, these folks don't live in little silos. They live in families. So what impacts the borrower is going to be impacting their families. There's been a lot of research done showing how student loan debt is impacting borrowers ability to purchase a home, to save for retirement, to start businesses. So this obviously has an impact on their kids, their partners and spouses if they're taking care of older parents. The ripple effects just from the individual level ripple out pretty far. But also, again, they live in communities, right? So they live in communities. And if you don't have the resources, you're not going to be spending at your local businesses. One of the things that I focus a lot on in my career is the impact of taking the earned income tax credit from families to pay off defaulted student loans. And the earned income tax credit is one of the most successful anti-poverty programs we have in this country. It's a tax credit that is refundable, meaning that, you know, it doesn't just offset what you would have owed that if you didn't know anything, you still get that money back and it's available to working low and middle class families. And for a lot of folks, it is the largest infusion of cash they get throughout the year. And so a lot of the families that I've talked to about this program would use that money to repair their refrigerator, for example, to make repairs to their car. You know, those really essential one time emergency things that folks kind of like put off because they don't have the month to month cash flow to pay for. So they often use their tax refund and their earned income tax credit to pay for those things. Some like really tragic stories that came my way as folks who were waiting to get medical expenses to take their kids to the dentist for basic medical care, but that were like one time large expenses. And I think that has a big impact, especially on low income communities, right. Where those funds are relied on broadly even more. We know students of color rely on loans more than their white peers. Do. We know that they take on more debt than their peers do, but after they leave school, it is harder to pay off those loans, right, because of disparities in wages. The starts with the racial wealth gap and the lack of familial wealth to pay for college to begin with. So we know that the loan problems really are concentrated more deeply in communities of color, in low income communities, and also women. Women hold two thirds of the student loan debt. And of course, this impacts Black women particularly. And so that, again, is going to have ripple effects within those communities as well.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:31:17] The Supreme Court earlier this summer in a one two punch, struck down affirmative action. And then the day after that, they blocked the Biden-Harris administration's student loan forgiveness program. And in fact, I was on the show last month to talk about the court's ruling on affirmative action. Do you think these rulings relate to one another? And if they do, in what ways and what do they tell us about who's most affected by those decisions?
Persis Yu [00:31:45] Yeah, I think that these two decisions are really important to look at side by side, right? Because the first one on affirmative action really is talking about who can access an education and how do we contend with this historical legacy of racism that has kept folks out of an education and kept folks in places where they're not going to have the resources to have all the tools? That their white peers have to get into school. So again, it really is about who has a right to be educated here and how are we going to ensure access. But student debt is also an issue of access, because what student debt is, I mean, it literally is the cost of admission. And if you're poor, you are a person of color and you have the audacity to try to get an education, you are going to have to take on this debt. And I think one of the pieces that folks don't really talk about is that debt is expensive. We know that Black students, for example, have to take on more debt than their white peers. And because it's more it's going to be even more expensive. Right. Because the interest is a percentage of how much you owe. So it's going to continue to grow. And if you can't pay it off right away, we know that means you're going to be paying for longer, which again, means more interest. And what this all accounts to is that education is more expensive for Black students, for women. Right. And so getting an education is going to cost more. Even if you have the opportunity to do so, the end of affirmative action could also result in more debt. Because when you look across the schools, it's not even right. And so the opportunity to go to the schools with the larger endowments who have the resources to provide better financial aid, I think is a real thing. And I think starting from that place of understanding that the better resourced schools are going to be able to prevent folks for having and taking on more debt as well. And so I think that's a real issue that we're going to be seeing in the future.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:33:37] In reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling on student loans. On July 14th, the Biden-Harris administration announced that they will provide $39 billion in debt relief to 840,000 qualified borrowers. But what makes a qualified borrower? How do you tell if you are one?
Persis Yu [00:33:57] That's a really important question. So this announcement for the 840,000 folks actually comes from an announcement that came in April of 2022 when the Biden administration announced that they were going to do what they called the income journey payment account adjustment. And what that was was in recognition of the fact that many borrowers were not getting into the repayment plans that they needed. An income driven payment actually started in the nineties. It started in 1994 and it provided cancellation after 25 years, which meant that we should have been seeing people starting to have their loans canceled in 2019. But in 2021, me and so my colleagues released a report based upon some data we were able to get from the Department of Education. Only 32 borrowers had ever received cancellation through the income driven payment program. There are more than 4 million borrowers who have been repayment more than 20 years and only 32 made it through.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:34:50] Wait 32?
Persis Yu [00:34:51] 32. Yes. In 2021, 32 borrowers were able to jump through all of those hoops in order to structure their loans to get the cancellation that income training repayment provided. And so not just because of my report, but the reports of others. And like the lawsuits against Navient and other student loan servicers, the administration announced that they were going to look back at everybody's records and recount the time to counted as an income drain qualifying payment. And so the 840,000 borrowers are the people whose loans, when they recalculated their payments, found that they had been making payments on their loans, communicating with their servicers for 20 or 25 years and have not crossed that finish line. Everyone who has a loan that's owned by the Department of Education is having their accounts recounted this way. Just some folks haven't crossed that threshold yet. And so, you know, I expect that number to continue to grow and grow and grow. Importantly, there are folks who have loans held by commercial lenders that are still federal loans. And those folks will need to consolidate in order to take advantage of this program. But as of right now, the administration has said that those folks can consolidate their loans before the end of the year and still take advantage of this program as well.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:36:05] If I understand correctly, you are actually a borrower of color. Talk to me about your personal experience with student loan debt.
Persis Yu [00:36:14] Yeah, I have at this point completely paid off my loans. Actually, I have one more payment on my private loans left, but I had six figures of student loan debt. And actually, this is part of how I developed the knowledge to help student loan borrowers was because I was trying to figure out how to get my loans into income driven payment. I had resources and a law degree which were helpful, although not perfect for navigating that system. But even at the point where I was considered a student loan expert and when I was at my last job worked on a legal treatise for student loan law, I had trouble navigating the system. I was in income driven payment, and when it came time for me to submit my annual documents, they got lost and my loans were put in a forbearance. And, you know, I missed my deadline because they lost my paperwork. And that happened to me multiple times when I would call my servicer and say, What's going on? When is this going to happen? They would say, Oh, just wait. Just wait. It'll happen, don't worry. And at one point in one of these times, my loans actually were delinquent because I had submitted all of the paperwork. They had my bank account information to withdraw the money, but the processing was not happening at the right time. And so my loans actually went into delinquent status. I am a student loan expert who has worked in public service for about 15 years, but it took me as a student loan expert more than 12 years to navigate through the ten year public service loan forgiveness program. I had two years worth of problems. And so like, if I can't get through this system, how can anybody get through this system? This is why I say the information is necessary, but not sufficient to get yourself through this program. And most folks don't have that information to begin with.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:37:59] Should people pursue a career in public service then to ensure debt forgiveness? Because for some careers, some positions that are considered public service, there is forgiveness, but not for everybody. Is this one way to get around that?
Persis Yu [00:38:15] So, I mean, I think the public service loan forgiveness program has had a lot of problems historically. In 2017 when public service loan forgiveness first became available. 98% of folks who applied were rejected. And it is just a systemic failure when 98% of people who think that they should qualify for a program are wrong. I think one of the biggest problems with the program in my mind is that it has a very limited view of how we classify public service. And so it's a great opportunity for folks who work for five or 1c3 nonprofit organizations or for governments. There's a lot of folks in our community who I think do public service who don't count. And so a lot of like home health care aides who work for private companies, unfortunately, weren't counted under the old rules. A lot of child care providers, social workers. Right. There's a lot of folks who do public service. But because of the way that employment is structured, may not technically qualify. But one of the things that is very encouraging is another action that this administration has taken is the public service loan forgiveness waiver and similar to the income driven payment account adjustment. They have gone back and recounted a lot of folks payments, and that has made a lot of folks eligible. Right. The number of folks who'd ever gotten it before Biden became president was in the low thousands. It is now over 600,000 folks who have made it across the finish line. So, again, programs are getting improved. People are getting their loans canceled. Now, it is a vitally important program and it provides huge relief to a lot of folks.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:39:46] So the definition of what public service is obviously needs to be expanded and improved upon.
Persis Yu [00:39:52] Yes, the Department of Education is in the process of writing those regulations as well. And so we're hopeful that it will be expanded.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:39:59] So Persis, after a three year payment freeze, student loan payments are scheduled to resume in October 2023. You've led a team of attorneys to advocate on behalf of low income student borrowers, student loan borrowers. We've asked our listeners to tell us about how student loan debt affects their quality of life. Here's one listener on what it's like to resume payments without any guaranteed relief.
Listener [00:40:25] As a Black trans borrower, it's shocking to me how much greed exists in this world and the way in which we were taught and conditioned to believe that going to college was somehow going to lead to some financial freedom. Find the papers to make this go away so that we can get on with our lives and actually do something and create things that actually create the type of world we want to live in.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:40:49] Do you typically hear this from borrowers and what are the concerns have you heard from people?
Persis Yu [00:40:54] Yeah, I think one of the things that this borrower spoke about in that education has been sold to students as their path to a future, that if folks don't get an education and they're not doing financially well, that's their fault, because why wouldn't they go get an education? Don't you know that an education is the ticket out of poverty? This is the ticket to the middle class. And then they come out on the other side with all of this debt and it's like, well, that was your fault. And so I do think a lot of folks feel like there was a bait and switch. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I think, again, the greed statement that this borrower brings up is incredibly poignant. A lot of people have made a lot of money off of this system and a lot of things haven't gone right. We have a lot of predatory for profit schools that have taken advantage of students. We have loan servicers who haven't provided the benefits that borrowers needed. And a lot of these folks have made a lot of money and not a lot of them have been made to pay. And at the end of the day, a lot of times it's the borrowers who left holding the bag here.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:41:52] Even with all these struggles, it seems that the Biden administration is trying to address borrowers’ needs. The same day the Supreme Court struck down the forgiveness program, the White House announced another income driven plan; the saving on a valuable education or SAVE plan, which is meant to. Place or enhance, revise pay as you earn or repay plan. But do these plans work, especially when it comes to the economic hardship low income communities often face?
Persis Yu [00:42:22] Yeah, I think it's so important to have a more affordable plan. I think that this plan does a lot of things structurally well. First of all, lowering the payment amounts for many borrowers, though not all borrowers. And I think that's an important distinction, that there are some folks who are left out of this plan. But lowering the payments is important. The other thing that it does is it does for borrowers who have very low incomes and whose payments won't cover their interest, it waives any unpaid interest. And this was a huge problem with the existing plans, is that they allow these balances to balloon and balloon and balloon. And then because folks don't have the resources to get through the whole 20 years, they wind up with this mountain of debt that is just unaffordable and unsustainable. And it is lowering the number of years towards repayment for a number of folks who took on less debt. And so I think it's doing some very important things. What needs to accompany that, though, is, of course, the ability for borrowers to trust their servicers and for services to do their jobs to get borrowers into these plans. And I think when we start repayment, we're going to see a lot of stress on that student loan servicing system. And it's going to be a huge test to see if it is actually able to help folks get through all of the hoops that they need to in order to get into these plans and have them work for them. And I'm very worried, to be perfectly honest.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:43:35] Finally, I'm wondering what's the true solution to address student loan debt then? I mean, we've heard a lot about the problems, a lot about the attempt to lessen or relieve the onus that is placed on student borrowers, especially low income student borrowers and people of color. So what does true relief look like?
Persis Yu [00:43:56] Yeah, I think we have to take an “and” approach to all of these problems. Right? I've talked to a lot of folks about student debt cancellation and they say, well, that doesn't solve the real problem with the cost of education that we have, this growing reliance on debt. We have rising tuition costs, rising cost of living for students in general, and a decrease in support for a lot of students. And so absolutely, we have to tackle those issues and we have to figure out a way for folks to be able to get an education without going deep into debt. And I think we have to address the fact that we have 40 million people who have debt and they have real problems that are also not going to be solved by fixing tuition costs for the next generation. Though I think most people really want that, too. And so we have to do both of these things simultaneously.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:44:43] A lot of people who are listening may themselves be borrowers, and I'm wondering if there's anything that borrowers themselves can do on a personal level or is this like totally systemic and it's beyond?
Persis Yu [00:44:58] Well, you know, it is systemic. And so I think, first of all, just acknowledging that it is not your fault. I think a lot of people feel so much shame about their student loans and so much shame about not getting into the right repayment plan and not being able to navigate this incredibly difficult situation the most effectively or the most efficiently. Like I said, information is necessary, but not enough. And so we have a website called CancelMyStudentDebt.org, and we provide resources for folks on how to get into the different cancellation programs. And I think it is important for folks to know that there is more cancellation than just what Biden announced last year or what he's proposing in the future, that there are existing programs and folks might qualify for it now. And so we have resources for folks to go and look into whether or not those programs would help them as well. We're also updating as we learn that information about the SAVE program as well, so that people can best figure out how to navigate their own financial lives.
Karen Grigsby Bates [00:45:55] Well, you've got your work cut out for you for the next decade. We're grateful that you were here with us. Persis Yu is deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center. Thanks so much for joining us.
Persis Yu [00:46:09] Thanks for having me here.
Farai Chideya [00:46:13] And that was co-host Karen Grigsby Bates. For more information on how to sign up for the SAVE program, check us out on Instagram @OurBodyPolitic. And to wrap us up. Here's more of what you had to say about student loans.
Listener 1 [00:46:26] My debt is about $62,000, and I believe when payment resumes, I may have a monthly payment of about $600 a month. And what that means for me is thats less money to go towards rent, less money to go towards a downpayment for a home, less money to go toward savings. We also live in an economy where our jobs aren't able to keep up with the rate of inflation.
Listener 2 [00:46:54] The government is seen fine as paying back for two or three years and I can absorb that hit, thankfully. But I know that is not reality for a lot of people.
Listener 3 [00:47:07] I feel like my total loan amount is lower than most folks. And what I have in total between undergrad and graduate school is $35,000, which is still more than I am willing to pay.
Listener 4 - Student loan debt adds a sense of dread in my quality of life. Even though I had a wonderful undergraduate experience, I don't see that it was worth this money. I've definitely thought about it limiting my kids choices to schools that I can afford without taking out any loans and without them taking out any loans.
Listener 5 - I do think that student loan debt should be canceled. Businesses were getting their PPP loans forgiven. I don't see why somebody who contributes to the economy, who is actively trying to better themselves with higher education, should be penalized for wanting to be a stand up citizen.
Listener 6 - I took on 3 to 4 jobs at a time, paid off my grad school loan. I want to pay it off as soon as I could because I know no job is permanent at any time. Anything can happen that can put you in even more like financial despair.
Listener 7 - I'm not happy that debt relief hasn't been granted. I'm wondering if I'll ever see it in my lifetime. But if it doesn't, I'm not pressed. I graduated with not that much debt compared to my peers. I got a lot of scholarships, so I would advise future generations do the same.
Farai Chideya [00:48:41]
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can also find us on social @OurBodyPolitic. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora farms and Rococo Punch.
I'm host and executive producer Farai Chideya. Nina Spensley and Shanta Covington are also executive producers. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Monica Morales Garcia is our producer. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Nicole Pasulka and Monica Morales Garcia are our fact checkers. This episode was produced by Monica Morales Garcia and Natyna Bean. It was engineered by Mike Garth and Carter Martin.
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