MASS DEPORTATIONDespite Trump’s Claim, Deportations Likely Wouldn’t Ease Housing Crisis, Most Experts Say
The mass deportations of immigrants that President-elect Donald Trump has promised aren’t likely to make a dent in the nation’s housing crisis, many experts say, despite what he and his supporters claimed during his campaign. Not only is the link between mass deportation and housing availability tenuous at best, but mass deportation may likely result in far fewer homes being built.
The mass deportations of immigrants that President-elect Donald Trump has promised aren’t likely to make a dent in the nation’s housing crisis, many experts say, despite what he and his supporters claimed during his campaign.
Experts say the reasons for that are many. Immigrants in the U.S. without documentation are more likely to live in low-income rental housing than they are to live in higher-income areas or to buy homes. They often live in multigenerational groups with many people in a household. And they are a key cog in the construction industry, meaning fewer homes would get built without their labor.
Yet, as the United States’ ongoing housing crisis grew more visible this year, Trump seized on immigration as a chief cause.
“Immigration is driving housing costs through the roof,” he said at a September rally in Arizona.
U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, the incoming vice president, in his October debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, went further, arguing that “illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country.”
Neither of those statements is true, according to many housing and immigration experts.
The relationship between immigration and housing affordability is far more nuanced, housing experts say. At best, immigration has an understated effect on the housing crisis. At worst, large-scale deportation plans could cripple an already strained construction labor industry heavily reliant on low-wage workers in the country without authorization.
Unable to meet most requirements for a mortgage on a home, immigrants living in the U.S. illegally often rely on extremely affordable rental housing. And multigenerational living is more common due to economic necessity, said Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
