Workers build a home in Marshall, N.C., in September 2023. President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan could potentially upend a construction workforce reliant on immigrants, stalling efforts to build more homes. (Chris Carlson/The Associated Press)
This story originally appeared on Stateline.
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.
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“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.
In recent years, he added, members of the millennial generation — not immigrants — have driven the rise in new households, especially during the pandemic.
“It’s important to push back against the argument that housing for one group comes at the cost of another,” Frost said.
‘Voters have expressed support’
More than 22 million people were living in households in 2022 with at least one immigrant who’s not in the United States legally — about 6.3 million households in total, according to Pew Research Center data.
Homes with immigrants living here illegally are just 4.8% of the United States’ 130 million households, according to Pew. In 86% of those households, either the head of the household or their spouse didn’t have legal authorization.
It’s important to push back against the argument that housing for one group comes at the cost of another.
– Riordan Frost, senior research analyst with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
And with a major demographic shift in the coming decade — a large, aging baby boom generation and declining birth rates — the United States will need immigrants or begin to lose population, Frost said.
He pointed to a January demographic outlook report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which notes that “net immigration increasingly drives population growth, accounting for all population growth beginning in 2040.”
Some housing experts say the math Trump describes can work out: Deporting immigrants living here without authorization would open more housing space, which could lower housing costs overall.
“Deporting 2 million individuals would reduce housing demand and relieve supply constraints, because those 2 million individuals are living in homes somewhere,” said Edward Pinto, a senior fellow and co-director of the AEI Housing Center at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
Pinto acknowledged that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally aren’t the sole driver of the housing crisis, citing the high cost of land and ineffective affordable housing programs as other barriers.
Yet while Trump’s plan for mass deportations has drawn criticism and partisan opinion, Pinto said it is in direct response to American voters’ fears about immigration.
“The voters have expressed support for deportation and repatriation,” said Pinto, who emphasized that Trump has pledged to focus first on deporting people with criminal convictions.
Uncertain market effects
If anything, some brokers say, deportations could hurt rental property owners. Any impact would most likely be felt first in among apartments in low-income communities, some brokers told Stateline.
Jeff Lichtenstein, who owns a real estate company in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, said the effects would ripple beyond the low-cost rental market, where many immigrants without documentation are tenants. A decline in rental prices in extremely low-income areas could create a domino effect, he said, dragging down prices in higher-priced rental categories and eventually affecting home sales.
“As cheaper rentals become more accessible, individuals who might otherwise save for a down payment on a home could opt to rent instead, slowing housing sales and potentially driving down home values across price points,” Lichtenstein said.
Meanwhile, the nation relies heavily on immigrant labor, including workers who are living in the United States illegally, to build new homes.
According to National Association of Home Builders data from 2022, immigrants account for at least 40% of the construction labor force in California and Texas, and for at least 30% in Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey and New York. Certain occupations are especially reliant on immigrant workers — plasterers, drywall installers and roofers among them.
In disaster-prone areas such as Florida, labor shortages driven by deportations could delay essential repairs and, if property owners can’t get them done, drive up insurance costs after storms, said Renata Castro, an immigration attorney in Coral Springs, Florida.
Those shortages also jack up repair costs, she added, which in turn affects housing prices when property sellers pass along those expenses.
“From roofers to plumbers, the demand for labor is insatiable,” Castro said. “However, Americans refuse to fill these positions — jobs they do not want to do.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
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