PRESS RELEASE
BUFFALO, N.Y. — TODAY, Friday, July 20th, at 2:40 PM, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will stand with community leaders and advocates at PUSH Buffalo to announce the Postal Banking Act, her legislation to create a retail bank in all of the U.S. Postal Service’s 30,000 locations. The Postal Bank would give low-income Americans, particularly in communities of color, access to basic banking services that are very often unavailable to them.
New York has some of the strongest anti-predatory lending laws in the country, but almost a quarter of New Yorkers still have limited access to traditional banking services, and eight percent have no access to these services. This problem is particularly pronounced in Buffalo, which a recent report found to be one of the top ten unbanked large cities in the United States. Since low-income households have limited access to traditional banking services such as checking and savings accounts, they are forced to spend their money on predatory services such as prepaid debit cards, rent-to-own stores, and overdraft fees. This makes it nearly impossible for them to escape the cycle of poverty. Gillibrand’s legislation would provide low-income New Yorkers a low-cost, basic, and safe financial alternative to these predatory practices.
DATE: TODAY, Friday, July 20th
TIME: 2:40 PM
PLACE: PUSH (People United for Sustainable Housing) Buffalo
271 Grant Street
Buffalo, NY 14213
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