URGENT ACTION ALERT
Mass Immigration Greatly Increases Housing Costs & Greatly Decreases Availability
04/23/2024 - CCN has documented the many Negative Effects of Mass Immigration on the USA. Two for example:
Foreign-born employment up 2.9 million, U.S.-born down 183,000
Net Costs of Legal Immigration to U.S. Taxpayers $330 Billion/Year
This April 2024 the Center for Immigration Studies has just released a study indicating that
Mass Immigration Increases Housing Costs
and Decreases Availability
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The Migrant Surge and the ‘Shelter’ Inflation of 2024
Cheap labor ain’t always cheap
and somebody ought to look into it
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 19, 2024
I recently discussed what proponents are lauding as the economic benefits of an unprecedented surge in both legal and illegal alien workers into the United States under the Biden administration, and identified serious downsides decision-makers weren’t considering — including the effects migration is imposing on resources for “housing, education, health care, and sustenance”. Thereafter, the latest inflation numbers came out, showing an unexpectedly high 3.5 percent increase in costs, year over year, in March. Half of that rise was driven by increases in the costs of gasoline and, critically, “shelter”. Economic pundits should realize cheap labor ain’t always cheap and take a look to see whether there’s a connection.
Immigrant Workers and the Growth in GDP.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis defines U.S. GDP as “a comprehensive measure of U.S. economic activity”, which “measures the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States”.
According to a recent analysis by Ernie Tedeschi, erstwhile chief economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers:
US [Gross Domestic Product, “GDP”] has grown by 8.2% since just before the pandemic, almost twice as fast as the next-best performer in the G7. The rise in the immigrant population since the end of 2019 accounts for at least a fifth (1.6 percentage points) of that US growth, accounting for direct labor supply, unemployment rate, and productivity effects. Absent immigration, the US labor supply would have shrunk by 1.2 million since 2019. Instead, it expanded by 2 million.
My colleague Steven Camarota made similar points about recent changes in the composition of the U.S. labor market, albeit from a slightly different perspective:
We keep hearing that the US economy is strong, especially the job market.
At first glance, this perspective seems to be spot-on. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, right before COVID-19 hit, the fourth quarter of 2023 shows 2.7 million more people working.
Except all those gains are among immigrants.
The number of immigrants working over this period is up by 2.9 million, while 183,000 fewer U.S.-born Americans are working.
Put simply, compared to 2019, all the net job growth has gone to immigrants.
As Camarota explained elsewhere, that decline in Americans holding jobs is not because the number of U.S.-born workers has fallen, but rather because the “labor force participation rate” for U.S.-born men aged 18 to 64 without a bachelor’s degree fell from 76.3 percent in Q4 2019 to 75.6 percent in Q4 2023.
That has followed a pattern of decline in the labor force participation rate among that cohort from the 1960s — when more than 90 percent were working — through 2000 (82.6 percent) and 2006 (80.5 percent).
In addition, Camarota notes: “At 66.4 percent, the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born women (18 to 64) without a bachelor’s in the fourth quarter of 2023 has returned to the 2019 level but is still well below the 70.7 percent in 2000.”
The Increase in Inadmissible Aliens.
I’ll leave aside the societal costs of the decline in the labor participation rate by U.S.-born workers — isolation, drug use, dependency, etc. — to focus instead on the impacts recent immigrants have imposed on the U.S. economy. To do that, I have to quantify how many “newcomers” have arrived.
In a resolution passed on a bipartisan basis in January, the U.S. House of Representatives found that “the Biden administration has released at least 3.3 million ... illegal aliens into the interior of the United States”. Since then, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border have released more than 225,000 additional illegal migrants, and about 120,000 other aliens have entered through various administration parole schemes.
That brings the new illegal population to somewhere around 3.65 million, a figure does not include 1.8 million “got-aways”, aliens who evaded apprehension at the Southwest border and who successfully entered the United States. Add them in, and you are up to 5.4 million new aliens on the low end — over and above the limits that Congress has already set — since January 2021.
“Consumer Price Index — March 2024”.
Not all of them are of working age, but they all need the basics: food, clothing, and a place to live. Which brings me to an April 10 news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) captioned “Consumer Price Index — March 2024”.
It revealed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — the key gauge of U.S. inflation — had increased .4 percent last month, for a 12-month increase of 3.5 percent, faster than had been expected and higher than in February.
The news had several implications, not least of which was that rising inflation made it unlikely that the Federal Reserve would cut its key interest rate anytime soon, and possibly not until March 2025. That, in turn, sent stock markets into a tailspin.
What accounted for the unexpected rise in the CPI? As BLS explained: “The index for shelter rose in March, as did the index for gasoline. Combined, these two indexes contributed over half of the monthly increase in the index for all items.” In fact, shelter costs rose 5.7 percent in March compared to a year ago, according to a Forbes analysis.
I have reviewed several assessments of the increase in shelter costs, and none mentions anything about the effects that millions of new arrivals — who came here again, both legally and illegally — have had on the housing market.
That’s a little odd, given the number of glowing assessments lauding the positive effects those aliens’ labor are having on the overall inflation numbers, including from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Inflationary Impact?
There are two reasons, however, why the inflationary impact those aliens are having on the housing market merits serious attention.
The first is that according to the Census Bureau, on January 20, 2021 — the day President Biden took office — the U.S. population stood at 331,755,386. As I write this, the Census Bureau estimates that the population stands at more than 336,315,000 — a calculation that assumes there is “one birth every nine seconds”, “one death every 10 seconds”, and “one international migrant (net) every 27 seconds”.
In other words, according to the Census Bureau, the U.S. population has increased by about 4.5 million since Inauguration Day — both through births and migration.
In reality, given the massive number of got-aways and DHS's lack of transparency, no one really knows exactly how long it takes for an additional “international migrant” to arrive under the president’s current policies, but given the migrant figures above, the Census Bureau’s estimate is likely low.
In any event, however, and taking the Census Bureau’s January 2021 estimate as correct, inadmissible aliens, here in whole or in part due to the administration’s immigration and border policies, have increased the U.S. population by almost exactly 1.6 percent.
Their arrival was virtually unforeseeable, and given acquisition, finance, permitting, and construction delays, there’s no way that the housing industry could have been expected to accommodate them in the interim.
That’s especially true given that the country is experiencing what NPR describes as a “housing crisis”. The outlet explains:
The U.S. is short millions of housing units. Half of renters are paying more than a third of their salary in housing costs, and for those looking to buy, scant few homes on the market are affordable for a typical household.
And there’s this, from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in October: “Many low-income renters ... face shortages in affordable housing. During the last three years, rents increased about 24%.” Note the part about “the last three years”.
That’s from a GAO report discussing the role the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plays in encouraging affordable housing starts, including through HUD’s “Housing Trust Fund”. The Fund is “designed to preserve and increase the number of affordable rental units available to extremely low-income households” by providing “funding to states for affordable housing rental projects”. As of March 2022, according to GAO “the Fund’s grantees had developed almost 2,200 rental units in 263 projects”.
Frankly, 2,200 rental units doesn’t seem like a lot when millions of migrants are pouring into the country, but that might just be my opinion.
The second is the very real impact shelter costs and the unavailability of housing are imposing on the northern U.S. cities to which many of them have headed.
Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) noted that his city has provided “shelter and care to approximately 183,000 new arrivals since the spring of 2022” in announcing that some of them would be forced to leave municipally provided housing after 30 days.
More than 38,000 migrants have come to Chicago according to the latest city data, and 10,000-plus of them were living in city shelters as of the middle of March. That’s when the Windy City announced its own 60-day shelter limit on occupants.
Massachusetts capped the number of migrant families in its shelters at 7,500 last year, and officials there announced in late March that they would “start implementing a one-month limit on families staying in safety-net shelters on May 1, with new requirements in order to extend their time”.
If fairly well-off states and localities are struggling to find space for migrants, isn’t it reasonable to assume that those and other migrants are placing strains on the availability of commercial housing, as well?
Then, there’s Denver, which has received almost 41,000 migrants. That city is implementing a new program under which it will “place asylum seekers in apartments for up to six months”, with a 1,000 cap.
Respectfully, unless Denver also expands its stock of available apartments significantly, that plan will simply increase the costs other apartment-seekers must pay for housing — unless the laws of supply and demand don’t apply in the Rockies.
It’s reasonable for economic officials to consider the benefits millions of new migrants have had on the U.S. economy. That said, it’s equally important for them to assess the costs those migrants are imposing on the economy, too — and especially on an American housing market that’s in “crisis”, and a key driver of inflation. Cheap labor ain’t always cheap."
cis.org
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Considering all the costs arising from Housing hundreds of thousands of Migrants it is accurate to say that Mass Immigration Greatly increases Housing Costs and Greatly decreases availability!
ACT NOW! Under the Biden Administration, Americans across the country are forced to face the consequences of its disastrous border policies in their communities and daily lives. Rather than taking a stand and fighting for border security, however, Congress opted for the status quo. Funding alone won’t solve the Biden Administration’s border crisis, and neither will weak bills that reinforce this administration’s open-borders agenda. It is far past time for Congress to act.
Finally, remember that the Mass Alien Amnesty Bill...aka "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" is always threatening in the background as a "COMPROMISE"!!!!! Any kind of Amnesty would further increase housing costs and further decrease availability
. BUT WE MUST ACT NOW to achieve success!!
GOOD NEWS: CCN HAS ACTIVISTS IN EVERY STATE, which is why we could stop the Mass Alien Amnesty Bill in December 2019
See recent CCN Alerts including: "Dream Act Amnesty Stalking Horse for CIR Mass Alien Amnesty!" to understand IN DETAIL the Great MULTIFACETED Threats these Alien Amnesty and other Bills pose. THE CHALLENGE is many of the INTENSIFYING Legislative Battles this Spring require CCN's constant attention and several Activist Mobilizations
MULTIPLY our Impact by making a Tax-Deductible Donation to Carrying Capacity Network NOW, BEFORE these LEGISLATIVE BATTLES are resolved unfavorably. .CCN can thereby intensify Mobilization of Activists across the USA to oppose bad bills and policies. CCN's Activists like you give us Clout!
ACTION ITEMS:
URGENT: START NOW! Contact your House Representative and Senators repeatedly and urge them to oppose all Bills that contain ANY INVASION ENABLING provisions whatsoever or increases in Legal Immigration or any funding for or admission of Illegals
And Most Important:
ONLY pushing CCN's all-categories-included zero Net MORATORIUM on Legal Immigration (which still allows about 150,000 legal immigrants per year) and for the Border Wall, and other provisions of H.R. 2, and against the Alien Amnesty et.al., MAXIMIZES the chances of stopping Bills supporting the Alien Invasion and a doubling of Legal Immigration!
CCN Activists can defeat Amnesty and other Invasion-enabling. Bills again, but to succeed, we must stay on top of AND SUCCESSFULLY OPPOSE MULTIPLE Invasion Enabling Provisions/Bills NOW and THROUGHOUT this Spring,and specifically push to:
close the Border
stop any Alien Amnesty or other bills enabling Mass Immigration
stop doubling of Legal Immigration and limit it to Zero-Net (i.e. about 150,000/year)
Stop admitting and funding Illegals
Require use of eVerify
Push for the Comprehensive Action Plan for Congress described below
CCN is pro-Legal Immigrant but anti-Mass Immigration!
So please Donate NOW to help CCN
successfully oppose adverse developments
THROUGHOUT THIS SPRING
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Enact an all-Categories-included Zero-NET MORATORIUM on Legal Immigration (still allowing 150,000/year)
Give strong hiring preference to Americans, especially the 5.9 Million displaced by immigrants since 2005 (cis.org)
Complete funding for and Building The Wall.
End Catch and Release of illegal aliens
End Chain Migration and Anchor Baby citizenship
Implement e-Verify.
Require asylum seekers to apply BEFORE entering the USA
Require DNA tests from adults and children claiming kinship
Outlaw Sanctuary Cities and States
Cooperate with our ASAP! Coalition Allies to Achieve these Goals