Gendering Property Ownership: Female Apartment Building Owners & the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1932-1942

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation’s (RFC) $11,500 mortgage loan for Vera List in 1935 made it possible for her to remain an apartment building owner.  A divorced woman, she was sole owner/manager of an 8-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills, California that generated a $300/month rental income.  She had defaulted on her loan but the RFC agent judged List a “careful manager” with solid prospects and endorsed her loan.   This state intervention sustained List who was unable to procure funding elsewhere.  In order to maintain ownership of her building, List had turned to the state to protect her property interests.

RFC paid mortgage loan files for the decade between 1932 and 1942 demonstrate List was not unusual and that the state’s intervention as mortgage loan provider was critical for female apartment building owners during the Great Depression who constituted 43 percent of all applicants in my sample.  This reflected the difficulties of procuring new loans during the 1930s mortgage crisis as well as the popularity of apartment building ownership for women.  It was an investment and income strategy as well as a family economic strategy enabling married women to generate revenue while caring for their families. 

I examine RFC loan files (1932-1942), manuscript census, tax records, newspapers and family papers to recover this population of female apartment building owners.  It asserts that gendering apartment building owners during the Depression reveals the critical role of the state which has hitherto been characterized by scholars as inattentive toward women during the New Deal.