AUGUST 2016 I Vol. 36, No. 8 parkcitiespeople.com    @pcpeople
BUSIN E S S
Organization Puts At-Need Drivers On the Road
By Elizabeth Ygartua
Special Contributor
W
hen West Dallas resident
Kimbely Rankin learned
that her eldest child, Brian, 13,
was offered a scholarship spot
at the Covenant School in North
Dallas last year, she didn’t know
what to do.
She didn’t have a car and it
would have taken Brian more
than an hour to get to school riding DART, and even then he still
would have been late to class.
Brian’s mentor through Mercy Street Doug Dixon, of University Park, referred Kimbely to On
The Road Lending. Through the
program, she was able to receive
an affordable car loan and purchase a 2013 Ford Focus. This
has allowed her to get Brian to
his new school and substantially reduce her morning commute.
“... If there’s an emergency
with my children, I’m able to just
jump in the car and go, versus
trying to call someone to come
pick me up or trying to get there
on the bus,” Rankin said.
According to a study by the
Brookings Institute in 2010, only
14.7 percent of jobs in Dallas are
accessible by public transit within a 90-minute commute.
“We’re so spread out; our geography is just such that it’s really difficult to function without
[a vehicle],” said On The Road
founder Michelle Corson.
And yet a 2014 American
Community Survey showed that
68,074 out of 891,554 households
in Dallas County don’t have a ve-
On the Road Lending has
provided loans to 50
families across Texas.
JOHN B. SUTTON, JR.
hicle; about eight percent.
About 80 percent of On the
Road loan applicants are women, and the majority are single
moms. Many have been referred
by groups such as The Family
Place, Genesis Women’s Shelter,
Salvation Army, Goodwill, and
Habitat for Humanity, Corson
says.
Most of the loans have a fiveyear term with a 9.75 percent
interest rate, which may seem
high, but Corson points out that
most of the applicants have either poor credit or no credit. At
the “We Finance: Buy Here, Pay
Here” car lots, applicants were
typically paying 22 percent, she
said.
“We have clients that have
had bankruptcies, and foreclosures, and auto repossessions,
and prison time,” Corson said.
“There’s nothing out there for
them. But more importantly,
when they go to a place like that,
not only do they get a bad loan,
they get a bad car generally.”
On the Road works with
a network of dealerships, but
about half of the cars have come
from Toyota of Richardson, Corson said. They typically give clients two or three cars to choose
from, most of which are three
years old and have less than
30,000 miles, she said.
“They go and they test drive
them and they decide, ‘I like this
or I don’t,’” Corson said. “It’s got
to be right for her family.”
Every client is required to
participate in a finance class,
during which they examine their
finances with one of the staff to
ensure the client has enough residual income to afford the average $275-per-month loan payment and is motivated to pay
it off, Corson said. Clients then
have to save to pay their title, tax,
and license; provide references;
and explain in a letter their history with money and cars. The
idea is that the clients have “skin
in the game,” Corson said.
“[The class] was helpful to
my life period, because I’m the
mother to three kids, and I need
to know those skills,” Kimbely
said. She hopes to have her loan
paid off in three years, just in
time for son’s high school graduation, she said.
Since 2013, Corson has
helped put 50 families across
Texas in cars.
“Low-income people can afford a car if you give them a really good car. And [Brian] is going to this school that’s going to
change his life,” Corson said. “He
couldn’t have done that if [his
mom] hadn’t had a car.”