WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance suggested undocumented immigrants are part of the reason home prices have almost doubled since early 2020.
Speaking at the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Vance said immigrants are competing with American citizens for a limited supply of homes.
“When we talk about housing and why costs are so high, we don’t talk enough about demand, and one of the drivers of increased housing demand is that we’ve got a lot of people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally,” Vance said. “That’s something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of housing.”
According to Redfin, the median U.S. home price was $297,000 in January 2020. Five years later, it was $418,000 — an increase of 41%.
After peaking at 69.2% at the end of 2004, the U.S. home ownership rate was 65.7% at the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In 1940, the U.S. home ownership rate was 43.6%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Vance said the Trump administration’s efforts to strengthen the border and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants coming into the U.S. will give “blue-collar people in the United States of America a shot at the American dream again.”
In prepared testimony for the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee last year, the director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies said a 5-percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12% increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent relative to their income. He noted, however, that more analysis was needed.
“We want Americans to be able to afford the American dream of home ownership,” Vance said, adding that when people own their homes they have more of a stake in their neighborhoods, cities and the country as a whole.
The National League of Cities is made up of city, town and village leaders focused on improving the quality of life for their current and future constituents, according to its website.
In addition to immigration, Vance blamed Americans’ inability to afford housing on “historic inflation that this country has dealt with over the last four years,” he said.
He also cited local zoning laws.
“We’ve got to actually make it easier to build homes. It’s going to take time, but this is a day-one issue for our entire team from the president on down,” Vance said, noting an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office for emergency price relief on housing.
The order called on all heads of executive departments and agencies to pursue actions that lower the cost of housing, expand the housing supply, eliminate unnecessary administrative expenses, eliminate requirements that increase home appliance costs, create employment opportunities for American workers and end climate policies that increase the costs of food and fuel.
Vance said Housing Secretary Scott Turner is working to reduce some of the regulations put in place during the Biden administration. He also praised Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin for “putting in important work” to bring down the cost of energy, which he said is a critical input to the cost of building, heating and powering a home.
