Foreclosures, immigration linked in report

Areas hit hardest have high percentage of foreign-born heads of household

By Timothy Pratt (contact)
Wed, May 13, 2009 (2 a.m.)

Related Document
Pew Hispanic Center report: "Through Boom and Bust: Minorities, Immigrants and Homeownership" (Condensed report appears after the article below)

Counties with high foreclosure rates also tend to have large immigrant populations, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released Tuesday.

The study ranked Clark County sixth nationwide in foreclosure rates last year with 8.9 percent of the valley’s houses in the courts. Nearly 1 in 4 heads of household locally were foreign-born, much higher than the national rate of 4.7 percent. Half of those immigrants were Hispanic.

But the study’s main author, Rakesh Kochhar, cautioned that focusing on those factors can lead to a “chicken and egg situation.â€