No, Immigrants Didn’t Cause Our Housing Crisis. Exclusionary Zoning Did.
JD Vance and NIMBY residents are blaming immigration for our housing shortage, but housing isn’t a zero-sum game.
Laura here, this is a repost of my Next City op-ed with with Michael Loudenslager. The points we raised at the beginning of the month remain as true as they do, unfortunately, relevant to the public debate.
When housing is scarce, when prices are high and homes are unaffordable for average Americans, who do we blame? For JD Vance, the answer is simple: immigrants.
During the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, Donald Trump’s running mate claimed housing is unaffordable because “millions of illegal immigrants [who] compete with Americans for scarce homes.” Just this week, he accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of “massively violating” zoning laws by having multiple families living in the same home.
Vance’s rhetoric perpetuates the same racism that caused housing to become scarce in the first place. Apartment bans and other exclusionary laws were written to keep people of color out of white neighborhoods. These outdated laws have caused a nationwide housing shortage that continues to segregate our communities and stifle the middle class. Laws that were originally intended to keep people of color out are now also keeping all young people, all middle-class people and all low-income families weighed down with high housing prices and ever-longer commutes.
Vance’s reductive reasoning is also based on a fundamental lie: that the amount of housing we have is fixed and that we must fight against each other for the homes that do exist. What JD Vance — and all of us — must instead acknowledge is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
We don’t have to fight one another for scraps. We can build enough housing for everyone.
It’s common in shortages to blame, to hate, to pick scapegoats. Relying on the age-old tactic of manufacturing anti-immigrant hate to win votes, Senator Vance brazenly blames a small group of individuals for a problem that exists because of a chronic housing shortage brought on by decades of bad policy. Blaming people for a systemic issue prevents us from getting to real solutions.
The housing shortage is caused by regressive zoning and byzantine permitting processes that stall or halt housing production altogether. Cities reserve land for housing but only allow a small number of homes on that land, which limits the number of people who can live in the community. In communities with many amenities like high-quality schools and high-paying jobs, demand for those homes increases. If very few homes can be built, prices skyrocket. As the shortage worsens, people are pushed into poverty and overcrowding. Everyone feels the squeeze as prices rise.
To be sure, building codes and other regulations are critical for health and safety. But restrictive zoning keeps down housing production and incentivizes sprawl by banning multifamily housing. With these restrictions on 75% of America’s residential land, we’re now nearly 4 million homes short across the country. (Per some estimates, the shortage is as high as 20 million.)
The YIMBY movement, academics and many elected officials are working to examine and reform these laws. But instead of joining the movement for solutions, many have repeatedly villainized immigrants, both from other countries and even other parts of the United States.
The explicitly racist language has been removed from many of our zoning laws, but the housing shortage and racism persist. At any community meeting in America where housing is being proposed, you can hear rhetoric similar to JD Vance’s — regardless of political affiliation. In San Francisco, California, we’ve heard residents say, “This will bring the wrong sorts of people into the neighborhood.” In Fort Collins, Colorado, we’ve heard the argument, “Let’s reduce immigration to ease the need for more housing.” In Springfield, Ohio, we’ve heard the false claim, “The immigrants are taking up all of the housing.”
As vile as JD Vance’s language has been, it’s not dissimilar from the hateful language we hear from conservatives and liberals alike as soon as affordable housing is proposed near their neighborhoods.
Blaming a small group of people rather than the laws that created the housing shortage in the first place pits neighbors against each other. It perpetuates the racism that keeps these exclusionary policies alive and it prevents us from implementing the solutions we know work. The truth is that America’s housing production is not keeping up with demand because our own local zoning laws prevent it.
Ultimately, the only way to ensure everyone has an affordable home that meets their needs is to allow more housing in existing high-demand neighborhoods. Changing zoning laws to allow for “Missing Middle” housing, duplexes and triplexes, and making permitting easier to obtain will help housing costs to decline.
Cities and states, both red and blue, are seeing the results of this. The City of Austin, Texas is seeing rents decline after years of advocacy from our friends at AURA. In California, Berkeley is seeing homelessness rates drop thanks to YIMBY advocacy and the pro-housing city council members who voted to allow more types of homes. We’ve even seen Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz produce pro-housing rhetoric and plans.
It’s time for JD Vance to get on board and admit that we don’t have to accept housing scarcity. We can and must choose abundance.
After the immigrants are deported, we're going to have a serious conversation on what we're going to do with the immigrant apologists.