Payday loans are illegal in New York, but not in California where Professor Lisa Servon did research working as a teller at Check Center, a check casher and payday lender in a low-income neighborhood in downtown Oakland. There she met Azlinah Tambu, a twenty-two-year-old single mother who took out five payday loans from five different payday lenders, ranging from fifty-five dollars to three hundred dollars each, to cover the expense of fixing her car. In a piece written for the New Yorker, Servon tells Tambu’s story, and discusses the need for a better solution for the growing demand for small loans in the US.
