America’s two vice presidential candidates agreed Tuesday night that the country is in the midst of a housing crisis, with too little housing and steady demand leading to soaring costs.
But Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz offered fundamentally different views on how the country got there and how to solve the problem.
Vance, the Republican candidate, believes housing is one of many problems that is caused by illegal immigration into the United States.
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities across this country, our schools are overwhelmed, our hospitals are overwhelmed, and our homes are completely unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants. In addition to zoning reform, Vance said he and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump need to compete with Americans for scarce housing, according to a CBS News transcript. Much of its policy is premised on an unprecedented mass deportation program that it claims will reduce competition.
Democratic candidate Walz said the reasons for America’s housing crisis are more nuanced.
“You can’t just blame immigration,” he says. “The fact of the matter is we don’t have enough naturally affordable housing, but the government is there to help start it, build it and build that foundation. ”Waltz and Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris want to use tax incentives and spending to encourage housing construction and ease the financial burden of buying a home. I’m thinking.
U.S. home prices are high: NBC News The Home Affordability Index remains very high, and housing costs continue to account for the bulk of consumer inflation, rising more than 24% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. are. The rise in rent has further accelerated.
But many economists warn that it is not easy to link rising immigration numbers to housing costs. Some say there is no way to examine existing data and research in real time to determine the extent of immigration’s impact on individual housing markets, but the study, created by Ernie Tedeschi, President Joe Biden’s former chief White House economist, The graph shows the following: There is no clear relationship between national growth in the foreign-born population and home prices for the native-born.
Other economists have pointed to the link between immigration and rising housing costs. After the debate, Vance’s , an influx of new immigrants to some geographic regions may result in upward pressure on rents.” — However, in the same speech, she said immigration also helped alleviate labor shortages.
Mr. Vance then shared two studies on housing and immigration that showed a link between increased immigration and rising housing costs, but both noted that the effects change over time. Showed a warning.
The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, published a blog post on Wednesday titled “J.D. Vance is right: Immigration drives up housing prices, and that’s OK.” The growing immigrant population does indeed lead to higher housing costs. However, he argued that “most immigrants cause housing prices to rise.” The increase in housing wealth due to immigration is attributed to native-born Americans, and immigrants are also thought to increase the overall housing supply due to their prominent position in the construction industry.
But economists are generally skeptical that immigration is the main cause of the current predicament. Chris Herbert, managing director of Harvard University’s Joint Housing Research Center, said that while immigrants do increase overall housing demand, “they are not responsible for the recent spikes in home prices and rents that occurred in 2020 and 2021. You can’t blame it.” In a statement emailed to news outlets, he said the pandemic came at a time when immigration was at its lowest level in decades.
Herbert said that when immigration began to surge in 2022 and peaked in 2023, “home price and rent growth slowed dramatically.”
“Interest rate developments and pandemic-driven housing demand are the main drivers of recent housing cost trends,” he added.
Sharon Cornelissen, housing director at the Consumers Federation of America, which advocates for fair housing policies, said immigrants have historically flocked to underpopulated and underutilized towns and neighborhoods without competing directly with native-born residents. He said there was a tendency to She cited the influx of immigrants that helped revitalize the cities of New York City and Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, which were dealing with the aftermath of white flight.
Middle Easterners are also helping rebuild the Detroit suburbs of Dearborn and Hamtramck, she said.
There is evidence that the recent influx of immigrants is proving difficult to cope with for the communities in which they arrive.
In Brockton, Massachusetts, immigrants from a variety of countries, including Haiti, Cape Verde, and Latin American countries, are straining local resources, mostly in the form of emergency shelter capacity. NBC Boston reported this summer that immigrant-focused nonprofits are helping newly arrived families move into motels and partnering with private landlords to move other families into apartments. .
Housing issues predate the immigration surge in Springfield, Ohio, which has become a flashpoint in the national immigration debate, City Manager Brian Heck told Vance and Democrat Sherrod Brown this summer. he said in a letter to senators.
But Heck acknowledged that immigration helped complicate the situation.
“More recently, Springfield has experienced a rapid population surge due to immigration, which has significantly impacted our ability as a community to provide adequate housing opportunities for all,” Heck wrote. In a community of just under 60,000 residents, the Haitian population is estimated to have increased from 15,000 to 20,000 in the past four years.
He said this growth is putting a “significant” strain on the city’s ability to provide housing for all residents. In fact, Zillow data shows a clear upward trend in Springfield rents this year compared to 2023.
“Even though 2,000 more homes are scheduled to come online over the next three to five years, this is still not enough,” Heck said.
What is his request? More help from Washington.
“Without additional support at the federal level, communities like Springfield will not be able to meet the housing needs of their residents,” he wrote.
