Washington Area Women's Foundation

Portrait Project 2010: Housing + Women & Their Families

For Sale SignIn honor of Women’s History Month, we’re not only celebrating women’s past accomplishments — we’re looking at ways in which we can make the future better for women and girls right here in our own community.  We’re exploring what we can all do to help women and girls achieve more, go further and have a brighter future.

Throughout the month and beyond, we’ll be highlighting findings from our new report 2010 Portrait of Women & Girls in the Washington Metropolitan Area in a wide variety of areas.  Portrait Project 2010 gives a clear and current look at the lives of women and girls across the region and it is divided by subject matter.  This week we’re focusing on housing.

Portrait Project 2010’s housing chapter focuses on what was lurking beneath the housing boom in our region eight years ago.  Subprime lending during that time tended to be “concentrated in neighborhoods with lower home prices, particularly those with larger shares of African American and Latino households.  The collateral damage from the ensuing foreclosures now threatens to undermine many of these communities.”

There’s a segment in Portrait Project 2010 dedicated to overcrowding.  The report found that “female-headed families with children are almost twice as likely to have inadequate living space as households overall, with 4.3 percent of such families living in overcrowded housing….”  Fairfax County has the highest rate of women-headed families with children living in overcrowded housing.

The report also addresses the lack of affordable housing in our region – a prominent issue.  “Over one-third of all households in the region pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing costs…. 16 percent of households in the region pay more than half of their monthly income on housing, a level that HUD deems as ‘severely unaffordable.’”

62 percent of female-headed households with families in the region have unaffordable housing costs. 68 percent of this family type in Montgomery County live in housing that costs more than 30 percent of their monthly income and 39 percent live in housing that costs more than half their income.

Portrait Project 2010 also explores homelessness.  The research found that while the size of the homeless population across the region overall has remained steady in recent years, the number of homeless families in the District has increased 37 percent since 2008.  Meanwhile, Prince George’s County has seen the largest drop in homelessness overall.  The homeless population there has dropped by a third since 2008.

Now that we know the issues, what can we – as a community – to do help?  Tomorrow, we’ll explore policy and strategy suggestions for ways we can create more affordable housing opportunities and prevent future foreclosure crises.  We’ll also take a look at the ways in which The Women’s Foundation and its Grantee Partners are helping women achieve their home ownership dreams.

Click here to read more of Portrait Project 2010.