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President Joe Biden announced that his administration would extend the pandemic-era pause in student loan repayments through June 30 amid legal challenges to his college debt-forgiveness plan, Bloomberg News reported. Payments now set to resume Jan. 1 won’t be required again until 60 days after court challenges to Biden’s loan forgiveness plan are settled. If the litigation is not resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that, the Education Department said in a statement. A federal appeals court last week blocked the administration from carrying out Biden’s plan to cancel as much as $20,000 in debt for some borrowers. “I’m confident that our student debt relief plan is legal,” Biden said in a tweet. “But it’s on hold because Republican officials want to block it.” The decision followed a ruling earlier this month from a federal judge in Texas finding the plan unlawful. The Department of Education has stopped accepting applications for loan forgiveness, thrusting millions of Americans into financial limbo. The fresh pause in loan payments would alleviate uncertainty for borrowers as the administration asks the Supreme Court to review lower-court orders preventing implementation of Biden’s debt-cancellation plan, the Education Department said.

Dina Bologa was shocked when she learned in July that the rent for her Jersey City, N.J., two-bedroom apartment would go up 40% to more than $6,000 a month if she renewed her lease. She thought about moving and tried negotiating with her landlord. Then Ms. Bologa’s neighbors, who were facing similar rent increases, started organizing, the Wall Street Journal reported. They filed petitions with the city saying that the 19-story waterfront building should be subject to rent control. The city’s rent-control administrator agreed. As of late August, the landlord could raise rent in Ms. Bologa’s building by no more than 4% a year. “When they go to these crazy numbers…people say, ‘Really? Can they do this? Are there no laws that limit anything on rent?’” said Ms. Bologa, referring to her landlord, Equity Residential. A spokesman for Equity Residential said it uses rental-pricing software and market comparisons in lease negotiations. The company plans to operate Ms. Bologa’s building under rent control in accordance with the city’s ruling, the spokesman said. Skyrocketing rents are prompting cities and towns across the U.S. to consider enacting rent control to keep prices in check. But in communities where these tenant protections have long been on the books, many residents aren’t aware of them or find that enforcing rent control is no easy task. Residents often don’t have the resources to pursue rent-control enforcement or are worried that they could lose their homes by fighting their landlords, said Brian Rans, attorney for the Jersey City-based nonprofit the Waterfront Project, which provides free legal assistance for housing and other civil issues.

U.S. consumers continued to seek out more credit cards this year even as the Federal Reserve aggressively lifted borrowing costs, a shift that cooled demand for mortgages, auto loans and other types of credit, according to research from the New York Fed, Bloomberg News reported. The New York Fed’s most recent credit-access survey showed an application rate for credit cards of 27.1% for October, remaining “robust” after a 26.5% rate seen a year before. By contrast, the application rate for credit overall declined slightly, after a 2021 rebound. Demand for any kind of credit is strongest from consumers with high credit scores, the study showed. Application rates for people with credit scores over 760 were above pre-pandemic levels, while rates for consumers with credit scores below 680 were below pre-pandemic levels.

The Biden administration’s decision to make it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy could offer a new safety valve for debtors who have exhausted other options for getting out from under heavy debt loads, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move, announced Thursday, comes as President Biden’s broader plan for mass student-debt cancellation is in limbo after being blocked by two separate federal courts. That plan calls for canceling up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers under certain income thresholds. It would render up to 20 million people free of debt, around half of all student-loan borrowers, if courts allow it go forward. The bankruptcy changes set specific requirements for borrowers to prove that they are experiencing economic distress. Government lawyers will assess a borrower’s ability to repay their loans based on a set formula — whether expenses equal or exceed a debtor’s income — and other considerations, such as retirement age, disability, educational attainment and job history. The scope of its impact will depend on how the new rules are applied by judges, lawyers and student-loan borrowers across the country in individual bankruptcy cases. Over time, the handling of these cases could differ depending on which party controls the White House. Read more. (Subscription required.)

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For decades, lawmakers shaped policy to benefit for-profit companies, nonprofits and state-affiliated organizations that earned money from the federal student-loan system, sometimes to the detriment of borrowers. Now, threats to these organizations’ bottom line could derail the Biden administration’s debt-cancellation plans, according to a MarketWatch.com analysis. In their lawsuit asking the court to strike down the debt forgiveness plan, six Republican-led states are arguing that they’ll be harmed by the cancellation program — and therefore have the right to sue over it — in part because it will cut into the revenue of state-affiliated entities that earn money from owning old student loans and servicing new ones. Attorneys representing the states cite potential harm to more than one of these entities as well as other claims as reasons why they have standing or the right to bring a lawsuit over the debt-cancellation plan. More than anything, it’s the risk to the financial interests of the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri (MOHELA) that appears to have convinced a panel of appellate court judges in the 8th circuit to grant the states’ request to temporarily block the Biden administration’s program while they hear the case. The suit is one of many filed by opponents of the loan forgiveness plan, including one that led a north Texas judge to declare it unconstitutional earlier this month. But since the states filed their suit in September, advocates and critics of the Biden administration’s debt relief plan have been watching it closely both because of the high-profile nature of the plaintiffs and because their claim for standing is arguably the strongest. The Biden Administration plans to ask the Supreme Court to restore the debt relief plan, according to a recent legal filing. Officials at MOHELA, which services student loans on behalf of the federal government, have said they weren’t involved in the states’ decision to file the lawsuit. Still, the litigation is the latest example of how the interests of these state-affiliated organizations and nonprofits that earn millions of dollars through their participation in the student loan system can impact policy surrounding it — and the fate of millions of borrowers.