CALIFORNIA FOCUS
1720 OAK STREET, SANTA
MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2024 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FALSELY BLAMING THE
UNDOCUMENTED WON’T SOLVE HOUSING PRICE CRISIS”
No one who has looked at
multiple listings of homes for sale anywhere in this country can doubt there’s
a price crisis. That’s especially true in California, where the median price of
homes sold in the last year topped $900,000.
This means almost half the
homes sold here went for more than the mystical million-dollar figure. Five
years ago, the median price was about $600,000. That is major league price
inflation, which began while Donald Trump was president and continued steadily
under Joe Biden.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance says we
should blame much of this on undocumented immigrants. They are, the Republican
vice presidential candidate claimed in his debate with Democratic counterpart
Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, “one of the most significant drivers of
home prices in this country.”
He was taken seriously when
claiming with a straight face that illegals, most of whom arrive at the
southern border penniless or nearly so, are competing heatedly with American
citizens for homes that cost, at a minimum, well above $100,000. It was an absurd
claim, but has gone largely unchallenged.
“You’ve got housing,” Vance
added, “that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal
immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
That’s a tad hard to believe
if you’ve ever seen undocumented immigrants living eight to a room in
low-priced motel rooms in virtually every part of California.
Similarly, Vance claims the
handling of undocumented children at the border became sloppier after Trump's
term, insisting that more than 320,000 illegal immigrant children are now
unaccounted for. Many, he claimed, are used as “mules” to carry drugs for Latin-American
cartels. He offered no evidence for any of this.
In fact, the government says
the actual figure is more like 80,000 untracked children. The rise in
unauthorized immigration of unaccompanied children began in 2014, with its
growth continual ever since. During 2023, more than 113,000 such children were
released to sponsors (statistics from the Washington, D.C.-based Migration
Policy Institute include all counties receiving at least 50 children per year),
while in the first quarter of this year, the number was about 61,000,
suggesting a doubling of undocumented children going to American sponsors in
just one year.
By comparison, when Trump
held office during 2019, more than 320,000 cases involving unaccompanied
undocumented children were referred for resolution hearings. That number oddly
coincides with the quantity of kids whose whereabouts Vance claimed are now unknown.
The figures are clearly
rising, even though this phenomenon has received little publicity, and Vance
gave no indication where his number originated. Regardless, unaccompanied
immigrant children are not bidding on many homes.
The Vance claims were part of
a politically motivated drive to make illegal immigration an even more potent
issue than it long has been. Linking illegal immigrants to increased housing
prices was an attempt to combine two serious issues.
But it totally contradicts
past Republican claims that any significant presence of the undocumented in a
neighborhood will drive housing prices down. Vance did not explain how the same
people can simultaneously drive real estate costs both up and down. This is
about as plausible as arguing that dirt-poor illegal immigrants can somehow
compete to buy homes at current prices.
Chris Herbert, managing
director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, told a
reporter that “Immigrants do add to overall housing demand, (but) they cannot
be blamed for the…surge in home prices and rents that took off in 2020 and
2021, when (overall) immigration reached its lowest levels in decades due to
the pandemic.”
Plus, because they lack funds
to buy at today’s prices, the undocumented are almost exclusively renters, not
buyers.
“They are not the people who
are buying homes,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for the Redfin online
real estate service, confirmed to a reporter. He noted that to get a home loan,
buyers need documentation, precisely what illegals lack…”They are more likely
to seek out family members who already have a home, and double up.”
So this was a phony
combination of issues from the moment Vance asserted it. One very real question
is why almost no one called him out for it.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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