At Rockford Health & Human Services, we are increasingly seeing residents trapped in a cycle of reliance on new payday loan apps, making it hard for them to pay their rent and other expenses.

Illinois is in the midst of an affordability crisis. With average rent for a one-bedroom apartment exceeding $1,500 a month, hardworking families across the state need every dollar they can earn, and one paycheck is spent before the next one arrives. Financial technologies are exploiting this grim reality through a new type of payday loan that forces people to pay to be paid.

Illinois wisely got rid of storefront payday loans. Payday lenders are notorious for trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt, often forcing borrowers to take out additional loans to cover the first, and putting families in a downward spiral. But savvy marketing campaigns and partnerships with major employers have tricked consumers into turning back to payday loans. This time, the storefront has been replaced by a smartphone app, and the loans masquerade as so-called earned wage access.

Although they’re marketed as no-interest, free access to money a worker has already earned, 9 in 10 advances of earned wages have fees. The apps drive workers to pay multiplying fees to get their money faster or more frequently. These earned wage payday loan apps take $300 a year or more from people struggling to make ends meet, not counting the overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees that increase after people start using the apps.

Some residents come to us early on and need guidance on how to end the cycle of reborrowing — we start with deleting the app. Others come to us when they are on the brink of homelessness.

A single mother recently came to our office looking for help getting out of one of these debt traps. Her daughter needed new shoes to try out for the basketball team, but she didn’t have the money, and waiting until payday would have kept her daughter on the sidelines. She thought she had found a reasonable solution when she turned to the earned wage advances promoted by her employer.

The app-based lender claimed the advance wasn’t a loan and that she was simply accessing money she had already earned. But this so-called advance nearly cost her and her daughter the roof over their heads.

The fees started to stack up and left a hole in her paycheck that was never filled. Week after week, she was borrowing again, each time generating additional fees, one for getting the money quickly, another when she accidentally paid a day late. It was a vicious cycle.

By the time she came into my office, she had been served with an eviction notice, and we scrambled to help stop the process. We counseled her on the dangers of these loans, and she agreed to never use a workplace payday loan app again. We were able to keep her in her home, but many Illinoisans are not so lucky.

Modern technology may have changed how workers borrow, but the consequences of carving a hole in next week’s paycheck for this week’s expenses remain the same. Whatever you call them, these apps force workers to pay to be paid.

Any short-term relief provided by these loans is quickly erased when workers receive a fraction of their paychecks on payday and end up in a spiral, spending hundreds of dollars a year on fees. That spiral exacerbates the affordability crisis.

Christopher Greenwood is the community services director for Rockford Health & Human Services, a community action agency.

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