The citizens of Dayton will learn to 'push back' against predatory lending practices and take control of what goes on in their city during a forum planned for Feb. 27.

In 2001, Dayton City Commissioner Dean Lovelace helped get a law in place that was intended to protect Dayton citizens against high-cost home loans. The ordinance included prohibitions on prepayment fees, 'balloon' payments and other features of home loans that were aimed at trapping borrowers in debt.

Lovelace, who is also the director of the Dayton Civic Scholars program at UD, said that several years later, state legislators passed a much weaker anti-predatory lending law that pre-empted the Dayton ordinance. The city of Dayton went to court to argue for the ability of the city to govern itself with the stronger law.

It was not until January of this year that a strong state law was passed on this issue, but some legislators attempted to remove from the law a section that would allow borrowers to sue those who gave them a bad loan, which Lovelace calls a strong feature of the law. Governor Strickland moved to veto the weakened law when he entered office, but there is currently a debate over whether the 10-day period that allowed him to do so had already expired.

Tom Linzey, executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), has helped communities fight back when state governments wrest local control from them through state-level laws. He will be speaking at the forum to educate Dayton citizens about what they can do to protect themselves from predatory lending and fight for their right to govern themselves.

Kat Walter of CELDF, who initially approached Lovelace about holding this public forum, said that the discussion will be about more than just predatory lending.

'[It's] for anybody interested in new strategies for pushing back and building citizens' rights into laws ' to decide what's right in the community where they live,' Walter said. 'It's not just about predatory lending. It's about their basic rights that have been stripped, and challenging the rights of corporations in communities, corporations that have more rights than citizens do.'

She said that the state law is not enough to protect the Dayton community because it only limits predatory lending, rather than banning it altogether. She called these lenders 'crafty' at getting around these limits.

'It's not right that predatory lenders have the right to decide what lending looks like in a community,' Walter said. 'The people in the community should have the right to decide whether predatory lenders should even operate here.'

She encourages students to come to the meeting and get involved in the issue. She said there are still many challenges that exist in the fight against predatory lending practices.

Lovelace agreed that students can make a difference. A UD sophomore helps him run the workshops at the Patterson Homestead that teach people how to avoid predatory lending. Lovelace said students are welcome to contact him if they are interested in helping with this 'Community Reinvestment Institute.'

The forum will be held Feb. 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the Zion Cultural Center, located at 40 Edwin Moses Blvd. For more information, contact Kat Walter at (937) 223-1577 or Dean Lovelace at (937) 333-3644.