During the recent vice presidential debate in the lead-up to the November election, Sen. JD Vance, R-OH, blamed undocumented immigrants for the rising home prices in the country.
In the Tuesday night debate, Vance claimed there were at least 25 million "illegal aliens" in the country competing against Americans in the housing market. This competition, in turn, drove up the prices of homes in the US.
CBS moderators at the debate did not address his statement during the debate but later released an article where they deemed it as "partially true."
Do Immigrants Really Drive up Home Prices?
The answer to this is quite complicated.
For starters, there are an estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the US, according to the Pew Research Center. While it is significantly smaller than the number Vance mentioned, there is no doubt that the surge of people in the country increased demand for housing. This led to increasing home and rental prices, especially in areas lacking inventory.
To support this, a 2014 paper by three economists found that a 1% increase in the immigrant population in a particular city also led to a 1% increase in average rents and housing values in the area.
However, the timing is not right. Home prices and rents saw their steepest rises before the recent surge of immigrants.
For instance, rental prices rose 12% in 2021. At the time, there was a net immigration inflow of 1.17 million people---a rate experts consider "modest." Rents then dipped by 2.8% when nearly 3.3 million immigrants entered the US.
Furthermore, immigrants often work in hard labor jobs. This includes construction work, which is currently seeing a shortage of workers. Additionally, a study published earlier this year attributed deportations and stringent immigration law enforcement as contributors to labor shortages in construction.
What Else Drives Home Prices Up?
There are other systemic problems that put upward pressure on home prices. Alia Trindle, director of political strategy for Right to the City Action, also attributed the rising cost to "unregulated real estate practices" such as tax cuts for wealthy households and policies favoring "corporate landlords," per The Intercept.
This was echoed by Bruna Sollod, senior political director of United We Dream Action, who also blamed the "economic ideologies of Republicans," adding that they are focused more on policies that "line the pockets of billionaire investors."
