On a recent Thursday, dozens of Latina immigrants clustered in a small, noisy second-floor office in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, waiting for one of a half-dozen loan officers to call their names and hand over a check. Children loitered in the stairwell or sprawled, calflike, over their mothers’ laps.

The loans were recorded the old-fashioned way, with ink, in green passbooks that enumerated the borrowers’ commitments to “exercise responsible financial behavior,” “seek preventative health care” and meet each week in a “comfortable and safe place.” Aside from these words, little secured the loans in question, which ranged from $1,500 to $8,000.   Read more