Subprime Lenders Love the Ladies

by Leigh Graham · 2009-03-08 08:30:00 UTC
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I don't think I spend much time here hammering home the ways certain groups are hit harder by poverty than others: children, the elderly, women, the disabled, African-Americans and Latin@s all have abnormally high rates of poverty compared to their national population or access to power in this country.  Today is International Women's Day, and I think it's important to consider the ways women - and typically their children - fall into, suffer from, or deal with being poor in this country:

Next week I'm traveling to the Tampa-Sarasota area to visit my retired dad, where the population is to my eye and hippy mind white and elderly and conservative.  It's no surprise that the region has some of THE WORST foreclosure rates in the country, given the high percentages of elderly women living there and the reality that they are prime targets of subprime lenders.  In fact:

Women borrowers are overrepresented in the subprime lending market according to studies done by both the Consumer Federation of America and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Across the economic spectrum, women receive less favorable terms than similarly situated men on home purchase, refinance, and home improvement loans. The studies also show that the gap between women and men receiving subprime loans actually increases as women's income increases.

We may try to cast blame on "minorities" hustling the government, demanding banks give them bad loans, but let's not forget unscrupulous single, middle-class women like myself, who have succumbed to societal/familial pressure to purchase a home as a smart investment, only to find ourselves effectively laid off and struggling to make ends meet less than four years after buying at near the top of the heady bubble.  I don't have a subprime loan, but I'm one of the lucky few.  When you're castigating all those irresponsible ladies you see in the foreclosure videos circulating around the web, think of me.

Matt has more on women and economic injustice in honor of IWD.

(Photo by sergeant killjoy)

Leigh Graham
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