impact on African Americans and Latinos, as racial and ethnic minorities and communities of color were frequently targeted by predatory mortgage lenders who steered borrowers into high-cost subprime loans, even when these borrowers would have qualified for less costly prime credit. (K) A May 2006 Brookings Institution report titled Credit Scores, Reports, and Getting Ahead in America found that counties with a relatively higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States tended to have lower credit scores compared with counties that had a lower concentration of communities of color. (L) Studies have consistently found that African American and Latino households tend, on average, to have lower credit scores than White households. The growing use of credit checks, therefore, may disproportionately screen otherwise qualified racial and ethnic minorities out of jobs, leading to discriminatory hiring practices, and further exacerbating the trend where unemployment for African American and Latino communities is elevated well above the rate of Whites. (M) A 2012 Demos survey found that 65 percent of White respondents reported having good or excellent credit scores while over half of African American households reported only having fair or bad credit. (5) Private education loans (A) The Consumer Bureau’s October 2014 report titled Annual Report of the CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman noted many private education loan borrowers, who sought to negotiate a modified repayment plan when they were experiencing a period of financial distress, were unable to get assistance from their loan holders, which often resulting in them defaulting on their loans. This pattern resembles the difficulty that a significant number of mortgage loan borrowers experienced when they sought to take responsible steps to work with their mortgage loan servicer to avoid foreclosure during the Great Recession. (B) Although private student loan holders may allow a borrower to postpone payments while enrolled in school full-time, many