During the first and only vice presidential debate of this election cycle, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance’s lies and misinformation about immigrants went largely unchecked, including a claim that undocumented immigrants are to blame for rising housing costs.

“You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” said Vance, repeating an argument he made in an interview this summer. “We should be kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should be building more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said at a different point in the debate. 

The CBS moderators did not address Vance’s claims about undocumented immigrants and housing. And the outlet later fact-checked the claims as “partially true.” Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, for his part, made an effort to push back. “Look, this issue of continuing to bring this up, of not dealing with it, of blaming migrants for everything,” the Minnesota governor said. “On housing, we could talk a little bit about Wall Street speculators buying up housing and making them less affordable, but it becomes a blame.”

Vance’s claims are “baseless,” said Alia Trindle, director of political strategy for Right to the City Action, the electoral arm of Right to the City Alliance, a national network of 74 housing, racial, and economic justice organizations.

Issues like a lack of affordable housing supply and other longstanding systemic problems have contributed to the housing crisis. Rather than immigrants driving housing costs, Trindle said, it’s tax cuts for the wealthy and other policies favoring “corporate landlords” that have exacerbated the housing crisis. “While Trump and his allies may attempt to shift blame to external factors or scapegoat immigrants,” she said, “the reality is that unregulated real estate practices are at the heart of the issue.”

“The simple fact is that the housing crisis lies squarely at the feet of the malevolence of developers just like Donald Trump himself, who have coordinated using algorithm-based tools like RealPage to spike rents, snatch up homes from working families, and block tenants from demanding reasonable changes to our housing system,” said Trindle.

“While Trump and his allies may attempt to shift blame to external factors or scapegoat immigrants, the reality is that unregulated real estate practices are at the heart of the issue.”

Bruna Sollod, the senior political director of United We Dream Action, an immigrants rights group, pinned the blame for rising housing costs on “the failure of the top down economic ideologies of Republicans, including policies that line the pockets of billionaire investors and harm working-class communities by increasing rent and housing prices.”

Local, state, and federal governments should ensure affordable and decent housing for all people, Sollod wrote, “including immigrants who are part of those families and many of who are the builders of these homes and infrastructure across the country.”

During the debate, journalists and experts on social media pointed out that undocumented immigrants are barred from obtaining federally backed mortgages and mortgage assistance programs, which means that undocumented immigrants are actually at a severe disadvantage when it comes to home purchasing. In its fact-check, CBS said that a growth in immigration under the Biden administration is “one factor” in the housing crisis, but noted that the housing shortage of an estimated 1.5 to 7 million units goes back to the Great Recession of the late aughts.

Vance’s claim stems from the official GOP platform, which repeatedly notes that deporting undocumented immigrants will help to lower housing costs. Former President Donald Trump has vowed to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history,” and the campaign has repeatedly linked that plan to housing.

Economists have said that the Trump-Vance “housing policy” of mass deportations would more than likely raise inflation, not lower it, and be an economic disaster. An investigation by Mother Jones noted that 1.4 million undocumented workers, comprising more than 10 percent of the labor force, are in construction, meaning that any mass deportation strategy would “grind the construction of new housing to a halt.” 

The Ohio senator didn’t stop at just blaming immigrants for the housing crisis. He also doubled down on racist attacks against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who faced harassment after Vance spread lies about members of the community eating pets. Vance also refused to answer a question about whether a Trump-Vance administration would separate families as a part of its mass deportation initiative. His nonanswer spoke volumes, suggesting that Trump would reenact one of the cruelest policies of his administration.

The post J.D. Vance Blamed Immigrants for the Housing Crisis. Corporate Greed Is the Real Culprit. appeared first on The Intercept.

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