Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential pick for the 2024 election, left all talk of Haitians eating cats, dogs, and other pets in Springfield, Ohio, in the CBS vice presidential debate on October 1, and marched right on down “scapegoating alley” to blaming immigrants for yet another ill; this time, the U.S. housing crisis.
“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said, according to a CBS News transcript after the October 1 debate.
The senator’s rhetoric, like that of his presidential running mate, paints immigrants as the primary culprit for everything wrong in America—including the nation’s housing struggles. But does his argument hold any water?
Chris Herbert, managing director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, noted that while immigrants do contribute to overall housing demand, they cannot be blamed for the surge in housing costs that began in 2020. He pointed out that the pandemic, not immigration, was the primary driver of skyrocketing home prices and rents.
“When immigration reached its lowest levels in decades due to the pandemic, housing prices still surged,” Herbert said in a statement. “And when immigration began to pick up again in 2022 and 2023, the growth in home prices and rents actually slowed down.”
Even conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute, while acknowledging that immigrants increase housing demand, admit that most of the economic benefits from this growth flow to native-born Americans. In fact, Cato noted that immigrants are a critical part of the construction workforce, helping to increase the housing supply and ease market pressures.
Historically, immigrants have revitalized under-used or depopulated areas rather than competing directly for housing with native-born residents. Sharon Cornelissen, housing director for the Consumer Federation of America, pointed to immigrant communities that helped breathe life back into New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s after decades of urban decay. Similarly, Middle Eastern immigrants were key to revitalizing cities near Detroit like Dearborn and Hamtramck.
Springfield, which has become a battleground in the national immigration debate, has experienced some revitalization along with a housing strain. According to City Manager Bryan Heck, while the city’s Haitian population has grown significantly in recent years, contributing to housing shortages, those problems predate the latest wave of immigrants. Without federal support, he said, cities like Springfield are simply not equipped to handle the housing demands of all residents.
“Despite 2,000 additional housing units set to come online over the next three to five years, this is still not enough,” Heck said, calling for more federal aid to help alleviate the housing crisis.
If Vance truly cares about solving the housing crisis in his state and the nation, he would do well to stop vilifying immigrants, start listening to the experts, and help come up with a real plan to tackle this national crisis. As even the Cato Institute admitted, immigrants are vital to the construction industry, which is essential to increasing the housing supply. Deporting them or halting future immigration would only exacerbate the problem.
Instead, Vance has introduced not a single bill on this issue that he claims is so very important. What he has spent most of his time doing since getting to Congress is to focus most of his time on attacking a woman’s right to choose with a bill about prohibiting “discrimination by abortion against an unborn child on the basis of Down syndrome,” improving “the reporting of abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” and prohibiting “the government of the District of Columbia from using federal funds to allow individuals who are not citizens of the United States to vote in any election, and for other purposes.”
Non-citizens cannot vote in elections, so this is a foolish bill and shows the ignorance of Vance. Much like his claim that the current VP can somehow solve all the current crises, including those left by his running mate and former President. Where are the houses Trump built for the middle class?
In the Vance game of pretending to care about “all Americans,” scapegoating, of course, always delivers the perfect illusion.
Felicia J. Persaud is the publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, a daily news outlet focused on positive news about Black immigrant communities from the Caribbean and Latin America.
Just curious…
Who do all the Trump supporters think are doing the basic — but crucial — jobs their overweight, texting kids won’t do?