By Clint Confehr
NASHVILLE, TN — Nearly 300 employees of a financial services business in Davidson County would lose their jobs or have work hours cut if Metro’s Council enacts a proposed ordinance to restrict operating hours of title and payday loan offices and check cashing services.
That’s what Advance Financial 24/7 owner Michael Hodges says about the effect of an ordinance proposed by Councilman Jason Holleman who counters that his constituents suggested limiting the hours of such cash companies as an anti-crime measure.
It’s been mentioned in discussions on improving Charlotte Avenue, Holleman said.
Advance Financial 24/7 is open all the time. If the proposed ordinance becomes law, that business and others like it would have to be closed between midnight and 6 a.m.
Holleman realizes unintended consequences may result from what he’s proposing.
“In Nashville,” Hodges says, “African American women are the majority of our employees.”
Of the 644 Advance Financial employees, 150 would lose their jobs, and the work hours would be reduced for 150 other people employed by Advance Financial Hodges said.
Public safety is at stake, Holleman said. “There are higher rates of burglary and robbery between midnight and 6 a.m. than there are during broad daylight,” Holleman said. “When people cash checks at night, there’s obviously a higher rate of robbery and thefts and this is one way to limit that. Folks who walk out of these places,” the councilman said, “it’s obvious they have cash on them.”
It’s not necessarily so, Hodges said. “We have debit cards and savings cards and people are loading their prepaid cards and they are paying bills,” said Hodges, who charges nothing to be the middleman between utilities and their customers. “We went 24/7 in 2010,” Hodges said. “Prior to that, we were burglarized when closed and held up when we were closing.”
Holleman counters, “That doesn’t address the number of folks who have been robbed in the vicinity” of such check cashing businesses.
Hodges says his business serves a number of people who need to make financial transactions late at night. They are workers with odd hours such as truck drivers, nurses, shift workers and people in many other lines of work. “They’re the people who make our city run during those non-traditional hours,” Hodges said.
“Every month, in Middle Tennessee, we do roughly 350,000 financial transactions,” he said. “In 2014, between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., we did 150,000 transactions.”
That annual number of 150,000 divided by 12 months equals 12,500 monthly late night financial transactions, or approximately 3.6 percent of the number of monthly transactions.
There are 58 Advance Financial 24/7 stores in Middle Tennessee, including two in the Columbia area, Hodges said. They’re also in other cities and counties surrounding Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County.
Hodges has plans to open another dozen stores in 2015.
Other businesses operating all the time — notably big chain groceries and a big box variety store — would not be affected by the ordinance Holleman proposes, Hodges said.
“We are a mom and pop operation,” Hodges said on his mobile phone as he and his wife, Tina, drove to a Saturday night social event. “I live in West Nashville and grew up in Bellvue.” Holleman’s district is between Charlotte Avenue and West End. “I have a seven-year record of working for and being an advocate of the people in our communities,” he said, emphasizing there are some people “who don’t want to see these businesses open at all as they have been identified as those who engage in predatory lending practices, yet I realize there are people who do need these services.”
Competitors of Advance Financial did not approach the councilman about enacting the proposed ordinance, he said.
He did, however, note that there appears to be a preponderance of such cash businesses on Gallatin Road, Nolensville Road and Murfreesboro Road. “I don’t think you have many of them on West End,” Holleman said.
Meanwhile, there’s an Advance Financial 24/7 store near a Kroger’s store at 800 Monroe St., where the grocery’s hours are 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, and Hodges says FedEx and UPS drivers are his biggest customers cashing paychecks after midnight and before 6 a.m.
For more about Hodges’ customers, go to www.af247.com