Cora Lewis
speaker
64 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 27 Feb
Cora Lewis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 2.
Appearances
But consumer advocates say this really is a short-term loan.
And if you look at the numbers and you calculate out an interest rate, it would be a triple-digit interest rate.
It would be mob-level, payday-level interest.
Yeah, the programs have really spread quickly in the last few years.
One of them, which is called Liveable, was acquired by a rental platform.
And so that one is really integrated into some of the rental market.
And the people who use them really are lower income people or people with lower credit scores who are really living paycheck to paycheck and who are looking for this flexibility and a little more time month to month to pay the rent.
So one person I talked to who had been a contracted delivery worker for Amazon said that he kept getting hit with charges from his landlord at the beginning of the month that were essentially late fees.
He wouldn't have all the rent at the top of the month.
So he started using Flex.
So Flex would break it up for him.
And someone else I talked to had experienced domestic violence and she had to move unexpectedly and also had difficulty coming up with the rent.
And this company was...
Helping her figure out month to month how to make her finances work is how they framed it to me.
I do, yeah.
The pattern that advocates have found is that while these are marketed as a way to make your life more stable, to be used maybe once or twice a year, what ends up happening is people really rely on these products every month.
And so those subscription fees and that 1% of rent every month really adds up.
It's hitting people who are already really strained and it becomes...
an additional strain on their finances.
In some ways, it shows that a lot of people have already overextended themselves on credit cards and are turning to these products and companies.
Showing 41–60 of 64 · page 3 of 4
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