A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
During the vice presidential debate earlier this month, JD Vance made a claim that went straight to some of the biggest concerns for American voters - immigration and housing.
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JD VANCE: You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.
MARTÍNEZ: Chloe East is an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver. She has studied the impact of immigration on people born in the United States. The picture is more complex. I called her up to get to the bottom of how undocumented immigrants affect the U.S. housing market.
CHLOE EAST: JD Vance is incorrect in his claim. While undocumented immigrants may play a small role in increasing housing prices in some areas, the majority of the reason that we're seeing increases in housing prices is other factors separate from undocumented immigration.
MARTÍNEZ: What role would they play?
EAST: When more people move into an area, whether they're undocumented immigrants or not, they increase demand for housing in that area, but they also increase demand for other things too. So this includes restaurant meals, haircuts, et cetera. And that increase in demand that we see for housing will have a small impact on housing prices.
MARTÍNEZ: What are the main drivers?
EAST: So the main factor is a slowdown in new residential construction that has been happening since the Great Recession. Also, high interest rates that we've seen in the last few years have been causing people not to sell their home. There was also an increase in demand for housing during the pandemic because of an increase in remote work that allowed people to work from home and want to have larger houses to do so. And then finally, there's been an increase in more restrictive zoning laws across the country, and that has also led to depressed residential construction and housing.
MARTÍNEZ: And typically, what types of housing do undocumented migrants tend to live in?
EAST: So undocumented immigrants primarily rent homes rather than buy, partly because of limitations on buying because of their legal status or their limited legal status. Undocumented immigrants are also more likely to double up or live with extended family members or nonrelatives compared to U.S.-born households. So in some sense, you could actually think about them as having lower demand for housing than an average U.S.-born household.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. After the debate, JD Vance cited on X Michelle Bowman. She's a member of the board of governors at the Federal Reserve. And this was the quote - "Given the current low inventory of affordable housing, the inflow of new immigrants to some geographic areas could result in upward pressure on rents." What do you make of that? I mean, are migrants, legal or not, contributing to a pressure on rent prices?
EAST: Right. So rents have gone up about 30% since the beginning of the pandemic, and I think it is true that there might be some areas in the U.S. where immigration is having a small role to play in that increase in housing prices. But again, immigrants are not the main reason that we're seeing that 30% increase in rents. We have about 4.5 million fewer homes than new families in the U.S., according to the most recent estimates, and 1 in 4 renters spend over 50% of their income on housing.
MARTÍNEZ: Under President George W. Bush's administration, 10 million people were deported. About 5 million people were deported under his successor, Barack Obama. Those numbers include what the Department of Homeland Security calls returns and removals. The Bush administration focused on worksite raids while Obama focused on deporting people with criminal histories and recent unauthorized border crossers.
EAST: The mass deportations did not improve housing prices. And if anything, they actually worsened housing prices because so many undocumented immigrants work in the construction industry. And it's clear from the research that U.S.-born workers do not take the jobs that are left behind when people are deported.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Chloe East, associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver. Chloe, thank you.
EAST: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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