Libraries Face Subprime Lending Crisis

905

Pareene

12/26/07 04:35PM

Filed to: don't overdue it

Queens libraries have spent years lending "books" to risky borrowers at adjustable rates (from "free" to 25 cents a day!), and now that's coming back to haunt them. With literally millions of dollars lent out without hope of recovery, they are turning now to collections agencies to force their unreliable credit risks to pay up or risk becoming even riskier credit risks. Which means that the Judy Blume book you checked out from the young adult section in 1994 because it had dirty words in it and then lost will prevent you from ever buying a home.

[Late Library Books Can Take Toll on Credit Scores]

The following replies are approved. To see additional replies that are pending approval, click Show Pending. Warning: These may contain graphic material.

Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate Pareene 12/27/07 08:56AM

There really ought to be a low-end limit on anything that can be put on your credit record. This really pisses me off, it's completely out of control.

And it's such an easy solution in this case. The library here just doesn't let you check anything else out if your books are overdue. You return the book and pay the fine or pay the replacement cost. It's done and handled. How much money are they spending to get back $5? Isn't a library publicly funded anyway?

So there will be some people who don't pay and never come back. It's such a small number that it wouldn't matter overall.

In my first year of college, I worked in a grocery store. The manager told me not to worry about people who come in and eat a donut or two because the majority of them are spending so much money there every week it doesn't matter: they'd rather lose a couple donuts and keep the customer.

winniemc Pareene 12/27/07 10:49AM

Try as you will, nothing can stop these crazed, criminal readers! They are the final stronghold of New York's criminal underclass, loitering outside libraries, intimidating mild-mannered TV viewers with their sharp-edged library cards, checking out and checking out, with little if any intention of returning by the stamped deadline. This looks like a job for the 650 new graduates of the police academy! Get em, rookies, before they renew!

lalalina Pareene 12/27/07 09:14AM

this is just the sort of punitive, puritanical, passing of the buck that makes our country great! i hope the manhattan public library doesn't start doing this. my credit's bad enough already without the 20 years overdue "my darling my hamburger" dragging it down further.

Atelier Pareene 12/26/07 07:14PM

They've been doing this for a while, and this same scenario happened to my dad a few years back. I borrowed a book with his card when I was like 11 or something, and when he went to refinance the house, there it was. It took an absolutely absurd amount of time to clear it up, and at one point I actually had to sign an affidavit swearing that it was, in fact, me who failed to return the book.