New Article: Housing for Women & Female-Headed Households

Posted by National League of Cities on April 4, 2023

In a recent article, Natasha Leonard, Program Manager for Housing & Community Development at the National League of Cities (NLC), outlines several challenges women, and particularly women of color, face on the path to housing stability. Women looking to purchase homes face barriers including a persistent wage gap compared to men, childcare responsibilities, and predatory lending practices that make finding and keeping housing difficult.  When it comes to renting, women are evicted at a higher rate than men and are more likely to spend a significant share of their income on rent. These issues hit single women and women of color the hardest, as they tend to already bring in less income than their white counterparts. Leonard argues that the first steps in addressing these disparities are to make sure The Fair Housing Act is being enforced on a local level in cities, that women know of the pathways to homeownership being offered, and that cities create eviction prevention programs targeted to help women. She notes that homeownership is one the best strategies for wealth-building and a driver of upward mobility in our country and it is possible to make women a bigger part of that.

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