Subprime Lending Debacle Knocks Women Of Color Harder

The New York Times reports that Baltimore Finds Subprime Crisis Snags Women:

The foreclosures threaten the neighborhood's fragile stability. And they highlight a broader dimension of the housing meltdown: subprime mortgages, which are driving the foreclosure rate, have gone disproportionately to women.

Single women have been among the fastest-growing groups of homeowners in recent years, and in Baltimore they accounted for 40 percent of home sales in 2006, twice the national average, according to the National Association of Realtors. Nearly half of these mortgages were subprime, National Community Reinvestment Coalition found.

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The findings support earlier research by the Consumers Union, which attributed some of the disparity to instability in women's credit status because of divorce or family medical emergency. Women also have less wealth than men, which increases the likelihood that they will get subprime loans.

Increased homeownership has been the principal means for women to close this wealth gap. But the disproportion of subprime loans, advocates said, makes it harder for women at all income levels to build wealth by paying off their mortgages.

"The striking thing is that the disparity between men and women actually goes up as income rises," said Allen J. Fishbein, director of credit and housing policy for the Consumer Federation of America. Among high earners — defined as people earning twice the median income — black women are as much as five times more likely to receive subprime mortgages than white men.