In the summer of 2019, I photographed the new cash advance businesses that appeared along the main drag of the semi-rural area where I grew up in East Tennessee. From one yearly visit to the next, suddenly, there were a dozen new commercial loan sharks clustered on a stretch of highway less than a mile long. A couple new bail bond storefronts gleamed alongside them.

These hastily constructed storefronts were impossible to miss, gleaming with generic promise and surrounded by cracked parking lots and kudzu. Most of them (but not all) are still there over 5 years later.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports that a typical two-week payday loan with a $15 per $100 fee equates to an annual percentage rate (APR) of almost 400 percent. More than half of these loans become long term debt burdens even though the majority are taken out for everyday life expenses such as rent, transportation, or groceries.

These types of loans are banned in several states, but still over 12 million Americans take out cash advance loans every year. Pew research shows that these borrowers are usually ”renters, people ages 25-44, parents of minor children, and those earning less than $40,000 per year”.