How Immigration Could Prop Up the U.S. Housing Market
How Immigration Could Prop Up the U.S. Housing Market
AS/COA and the Partnership for a New American Economy released new data by the U.S. Census on how immigration bolsters U.S. housing demand in once or potentially blighted areas.
A couple years ago, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had a clever idea for dealing with cities like Detroit, whose populations are dwindling: let immigrants live there.
At the time, a spokesperson for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing dismissed the idea, saying, “There are things that would have to be considered before we just open the flood gates and say everyone come in.” But new research from Jacob Vigdor, an economist at Duke, suggests that opening the floodgates a little bit might be worth it.
Vigdor’s latest work, conducted by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and Partnership for a New American Economy — the same pro-immigration group that recently released an excellent paper on North Carolina farm workers last month — looks, county by county, at immigration rates and housing values to see if there’s any relationship between the two.
There is, and it’s positive. Vigdor estimates that the average immigrant adds 11.5 cents to the value of the average home in his county. Considering that there are 40 million immigrants in the U.S., and 800,000 housing units, that adds up to about $3.7 trillion in increased housing value.
That could be a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, that’s $3.7 trillion more wealth that somebody holds. On the other, it translates into costlier mortgages which in turn translate into costlier rents, making housing less affordable. But Vigdor’s not particularly worried about that. In already costly counties like San Francisco or Manhattan, the effects are muted....
