Paloma Del Toro, a junior at Carnegie Mellon University, sits for a portrait in Baker Hall on March 23, 2023. Del Toro started at a community college but transferred to CMU, taking out about $20,000 total. That debt would be wiped out under President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Thousands of eligible people in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County have applied for debt relief. Now, they’re in a holding pattern.
by and
As he poured an even layer of batter into a waffle machine, Jacob Heinzl explained how having his student loans forgiven would be a “big weight lifted.” Moments later, the waffle machine steamed. He grabbed a spatula, scraped the freshly made, wispy waffle out of the machine and quickly shaped it into a waffle cone.
“I have my fingers crossed, but my hopes aren’t too high,” said Heinzl, 31. He estimates that he took out about $20,000 in loans for college. He works at Scoops in Bloomfield and drives for DoorDash with a car he purchased during the ongoing student loan payment pause.
Heinzl attended Slippery Rock University for three semesters, beginning in 2010, and transferred to the Community College of Allegheny County. He has an associate’s degree in psychology and estimates that he has about $7,000 left in loans to pay off.
“I didn’t really know what I was signing up for when I initially went to college,” he said. “I just went to college because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.”
The weight of his debt seems to be “slowing everything down,” he said. He’s put off his dream of going to nursing school partly because of his loans. He doesn’t want to accumulate more debt.
JACOB HEINZL, 31, ESTIMATES THAT HE TOOK OUT ABOUT $20,000 IN STUDENT LOAN DEBT.
“I have my fingers crossed, but my hopes aren’t too high.”
As Heinzl defers his plans, thousands of Pittsburghers like him are waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is constitutional. The court is mulling two legal challenges to Biden’s proposal, which would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 a year. The justices are expected to rule in late June or early July, almost a year after Biden announced the relief.
Pittsburghers were able to apply for forgiveness from October to November 2022. At that point, the Biden administration stopped taking applications after a federal judge in Texas deemed the plan unlawful. In Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, which includes Pittsburgh and parts of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties, an estimated 64% of eligible people — 78,800 in total — applied, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
In all, more than 2 million Pennsylvanians hold student loan debt. They may have to soon start making monthly payments on their federal student loans again, after a three-year reprieve. The Department of Education has stated that those payments will resume 60 days after June 30 or the Supreme Court’s ruling, whichever is sooner.
‘Fingers crossed’ for loan forgiveness
First-generation college student Paloma Del Toro transferred to Carnegie Mellon University from community college on a federal Pell Grant, which provides aid to low-income students. She expects to take out about $20,000 in loans. Her debt would be entirely wiped away under Biden’s forgiveness plan, as it would for nearly half of borrowers in the United States. She’s counting on that relief.
“I don’t really have much to fall back on,” said Del Toro, a junior. She added that her family doesn’t “have that type of money to be paying these loans right off the bat when we graduate.”
Read entire article here
About Post Author
