The Pacifica City Council will hear the public's opinion on a temporary moratorium on new payday lenders in Pacifica tonight. 

The possibility of a ban is partially the result of a study by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development in which it was found that Pacifica has the highest per capita rate of payday lenders in San Mateo County, and one of the highest in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Anita Rees, director of the Pacifica Resource Center, a local organization that provides food and financial assistance to in-need families and individuals, brought the study to the attention of the city council and asked that the body do something about controlling what it sees as a threat to some Pacificans' livelihoods. 

Rees and Tim Lohrentz, program manager at the Insight Center and author or much of the center's reporting on payday lending in San Mateo County, believe that payday lenders prey on low-income families and individuals.

That's because when someone takes out a payday loan, often in advance of their paycheck, they pay a fee up front. In California, the maximum legal payday loan is $300, and the fee is typically $45, so someone pays $45 dollars to receive $255. But, according to the Insight Center, most payday loan customers end up taking out a new loan before the end of the loan period, which is two weeks, and are often encouraged to do so by lenders. The steep upfront interest rate coupled with the short loan term make the effective interest rate on payday lending 459 percent.

The moratorium that the public can comment on tonight will last for 45 days, and the city council can extend it for 22 months and 15 days if it so chooses, said Lee Diaz, associate planner at the Pacifica Planning Department. 

"It will just be basically a simple ordinance that at this point will halt any new permits to do with payday lenders," said Diaz. "At this point, [the city council] has quite a variety of tools that they could use, with respect to regulating these kind of [permit] uses [after the ban is in place]."

Such tools might include new laws regulating how close a payday lender could set up shop near a school or public place, or how close payday lenders could set up to one another.

The ordinance is available for review by  the public in the planning department's offices at 1800 Francisco Boulevard. The public hearing will happen during the city council meeting which begins at 7pm at 2212 Beach Boulevard.