Women foreclosed: a gender analysis of housing loss in the US Deep South

Abstract

Women were a focus of subprime lending during the housing boom, increasing their risk of mortgage foreclosure during the Great Recession of 2007–2011. Following Valentine's (2007) call for a feminist geography on interactions between social categories and geographic patterns, this article investigates housing loss among women foreclosees in a southern US county with a history of residential segregation. We collected foreclosure data manually from legal notices and municipal property records, compared foreclosures with home mortgage rates for couples, sole men, and sole women homeowners between 2008 and 2012, and then combined the information with census tract data for GIS analysis. Women homeowners typically foreclosed within five years of buying modestly priced homes, which were mostly concentrated in African-American neighborhoods close to the county seat. Women were significantly more likely to foreclose than other homebuyers, a new twist on gender and race inequalities in US homeownership that increased during a recessionary economy. This foreclosure activity followed historical patterns of residential segregation, with privilege and disadvantage in juxtaposition with social hierarchies of race and class. We conclude that housing loss in the US South is complicated by racial history and the subordinate status of ‘women alone’ in the residential mortgage market.