Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that a surge in illegal immigration, combined with years of sluggish home construction, has pushed housing prices to levels that many Americans can no longer afford. Vance made the comments during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive,” Vance said. “Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants. They’re taking houses that ought to go to American citizens,” Vance said. And at the same time, we weren’t building enough new houses to begin with, even for the population that we had. What we’re doing is trying to make it easier to build houses, trying to make it easier to build factories and things like that so that people have good jobs.”
Vance said the influx strained the housing supply at the same time builders were already failing to keep pace with demand.
“We’re also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country, and you’re already seeing it start to pay dividends. Working people’s wages are going up, and that’s how we ultimately chip away at the Biden affordability crisis. We make an economy where people can afford to buy the things that they need. The best way to do that is good jobs and good wages,” Vance added.
“And that’s why the president’s focus is where it is. Under the Biden administration, the price of a new home literally doubled in four years. It went up 100 percent. Under the Trump administration, housing and rent prices are up about 1 to 2 percent — actually in line with what you would like to see,” Vance argued.
Vance said the administration believes the country needs to construct several million additional homes to stabilize the market.
“We probably need to build about 5 million new homes,” he told Hannity.
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The vice president said Republican-led states are meeting housing needs more effectively than Democratic states.
“One of the biggest challenges that we have in the housing market, aside from too many illegal aliens who are taking the houses of American citizens, is that in the blue states, you’re not building enough houses,” Vance said.
“No robot can replace a great blue-collar construction worker,” Vance said.
“But can a robot maybe make it easier for a construction worker to put more nails in more walls over a shorter period of time — some of the rote things? You’re going to see robotics help the construction workers.”
Vance said improved technology, more construction, and stronger wage growth will help more Americans buy homes and start families.
“We will do a lot over the next three years and three months to make sure more people can buy homes,” he said.
“Young people can start families, and we’ve got good jobs putting people on a career trajectory.”
He said economic stagnation under the previous administration trapped workers in low-paying jobs with no path upward.
“The biggest problem in the Biden economy was that people couldn’t build a career out of a job,” Vance said.
“You had fourteen or fifteen dollars an hour with no promise to make more.”
“That’s not how you build a middle-class American dream,” he said.
“That’s how you build debt servants.”