Fertility in the US (as in many other developed economies) is not sufficient to reach replacement levels. Without immigration the total population of this country would be in decline.
I am positive there are many factors at work here affecting housing prices but in a scenario where the population is falling it's tough to see how that would not exert downward pressure on housing costs (even if countervailing forces balance out or reverse the overall trend).
It's funny to talk about "heartland visa" as if the coastal states didnt have large semi-rural and rural areas that face exactly the same kinds of problems as Ohio does. There is a funny misconception that everyone on the coast lives in the big cities or their immediate suburbs - probably no more true than everyone in Georgia lives in Atlanta.
"The pattern was especially noticeable, and started earlier, in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago." Well I don't think any of these cities are going to vote for Trump.
With regards to dispersion: if whites and the native born are abandoning small towns like Braddock, Pennsylvania why would immigrants reverse that pattern? If jobs are scarce and opportunities limited why would anybody, immigrant or not, move there?
Second with regards to place based visas: First, that obviously only applies to legal immigrants. Second, how do you enforce it? If somebody gets a better job offer in a place like LA or Atlanta are you seriously going to argue that a migrant should be forced to turn it down on fear of a penalty such as deportation?
The far right will blame every problem on immigration.
They won't talk about lack of public housing, too strict zoning, property speculation, lack of frequent and reliable public transport, and the wasteful suburban sprawl model.
Obviously, each area in the US is different. For instance, in New York there is lack of housing and property speculation. If you look at cities like Singapore, Tokyo or Berlin, there are different models to learn from.
"One way to do this is with place-based visas, which encourage immigrants to move to the places where the local economy could use the biggest boost."
...The same places in America where employment has gone to shit and where there are serious drug issues. Where immigrants are least likely to be welcomed and safe. LMAO. You go first, Noah.
Housing is costly in the places where the jobs are, as rentiers use the scarcity of land to capture the increased salaries and wages being paid in those places. Remote work could have helped a lot, but wealthy douchebags (much like Noah) keep saying that getting quarterly Omicron infections is no big deal and that everybody should go back to the office, bleating about "innovation!" and "collaboration!" to prop up their sagging commercial real estate portfolios.
So, no, Noah. They aren't moving to fucking Nebraska. And you're a moron for suggesting that they should.
Your stats and conclusions are so different from what I see from other reliable sources that I am going to have to do some more research before I say anything more.
"The typical American renter is now rent-burdened — meaning that 30 percent of the median U.S. income is required to pay the average rent, according to a new report from Moody’s Analytics."
Maybe this is all due to more space per person. It's possible that more households are rent burdened while the median household is doing fine. Let's dig into this more.
Reforming immigration, attracting more "high value" immigrants and deterring lower value/negative value immigrants would be a good thing. Reforming land use/building code restrictions on urban real estate development would be a good thing. I'm dubious about the value of linking the two.
Another reason why there is no rise in rents with more immigrants is that the numbers seem to assume a 1 for 1 tradeoff - one immigrant takes the rental place of one citizen. When much more likely the house/apartment that used to house 2-3 people, with immigrants will house 5-10. Saves money to send back home, may all work in same place, gives a sense of home etc..
So, if possible, could you write more about whether the problem with rental prices in this article could be really applied for Australia, if you could find data? You could just post as a comment here though.
Does he really think that immigrants in a housing desert like NH could have any effect on local housing prices? Even if it was being paid for by the refugee agencies, the assistance stops after one year. Then they, sadly, have to go somewhere where they can share housing costs with other, established, refugees, and THAT makes no difference to local rental rates.
Per the 2020 census, the United States of America saw the lowest ten-year population increase *in its history*. Yes, even lower than the 1930s. (And we ceased being a global leader in terms of net immigration rates many years ago: adjusted for scale, the US is at most a middling immigration power).
It would be a pretty sad state of affairs if the only way the US can bring relief to renters is by ratcheting down population growth even lower than its current, ahistorically depressed levels.
The GOP has fully transformed itself into the party to techno-pessimism and declinism. Sad!
I never voted for Trump but I thought he could be a positive force by making the GOP more of working class oriented party and China skeptical and obviously rooting out neocons (how could it get worse?). So I thought maybe the Trump acolytes that won elections would maybe not be con men like Trump while promoting Trump’s agenda…boy was I wrong! JD Vance is a huge disappointment and I actually liked the movie based on Hillbilly Elegy!?!
1. Canada has a great provincial nomination system for immigration. It can work here.
2. Vance is being unserious and Noah should stop wasting time on his bullshit.
3. Ask Vance about building more housing and watch how he flips into full NIMBY mode.
Fertility in the US (as in many other developed economies) is not sufficient to reach replacement levels. Without immigration the total population of this country would be in decline.
I am positive there are many factors at work here affecting housing prices but in a scenario where the population is falling it's tough to see how that would not exert downward pressure on housing costs (even if countervailing forces balance out or reverse the overall trend).
It's funny to talk about "heartland visa" as if the coastal states didnt have large semi-rural and rural areas that face exactly the same kinds of problems as Ohio does. There is a funny misconception that everyone on the coast lives in the big cities or their immediate suburbs - probably no more true than everyone in Georgia lives in Atlanta.
"The pattern was especially noticeable, and started earlier, in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago." Well I don't think any of these cities are going to vote for Trump.
With regards to dispersion: if whites and the native born are abandoning small towns like Braddock, Pennsylvania why would immigrants reverse that pattern? If jobs are scarce and opportunities limited why would anybody, immigrant or not, move there?
Second with regards to place based visas: First, that obviously only applies to legal immigrants. Second, how do you enforce it? If somebody gets a better job offer in a place like LA or Atlanta are you seriously going to argue that a migrant should be forced to turn it down on fear of a penalty such as deportation?
The far right will blame every problem on immigration.
They won't talk about lack of public housing, too strict zoning, property speculation, lack of frequent and reliable public transport, and the wasteful suburban sprawl model.
Obviously, each area in the US is different. For instance, in New York there is lack of housing and property speculation. If you look at cities like Singapore, Tokyo or Berlin, there are different models to learn from.
But immigration is certainly not the issue.
It's funny and sad that his reaction to high housing prices is "Literally just scapegoat immigrants".
"One way to do this is with place-based visas, which encourage immigrants to move to the places where the local economy could use the biggest boost."
...The same places in America where employment has gone to shit and where there are serious drug issues. Where immigrants are least likely to be welcomed and safe. LMAO. You go first, Noah.
Housing is costly in the places where the jobs are, as rentiers use the scarcity of land to capture the increased salaries and wages being paid in those places. Remote work could have helped a lot, but wealthy douchebags (much like Noah) keep saying that getting quarterly Omicron infections is no big deal and that everybody should go back to the office, bleating about "innovation!" and "collaboration!" to prop up their sagging commercial real estate portfolios.
So, no, Noah. They aren't moving to fucking Nebraska. And you're a moron for suggesting that they should.
Your stats and conclusions are so different from what I see from other reliable sources that I am going to have to do some more research before I say anything more.
"The typical American renter is now rent-burdened — meaning that 30 percent of the median U.S. income is required to pay the average rent, according to a new report from Moody’s Analytics."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/realestate/rent-burdened-american-households.html
See graph 2 here (its kind of old but contradicts your graph quite a bit)
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2018/04/american-families-face-a-growing-rent-burden
Maybe this is all due to more space per person. It's possible that more households are rent burdened while the median household is doing fine. Let's dig into this more.
Reforming immigration, attracting more "high value" immigrants and deterring lower value/negative value immigrants would be a good thing. Reforming land use/building code restrictions on urban real estate development would be a good thing. I'm dubious about the value of linking the two.
Another reason why there is no rise in rents with more immigrants is that the numbers seem to assume a 1 for 1 tradeoff - one immigrant takes the rental place of one citizen. When much more likely the house/apartment that used to house 2-3 people, with immigrants will house 5-10. Saves money to send back home, may all work in same place, gives a sense of home etc..
Thank you for this great piece of writing Noah!
In Australia (where I am living now), currently there is the same problem: high immigration and a rental crisis in large cities (I remembered that the rental vacancy rate in Adelaide or Brisbane was under 1% recently), and people are starting to blame immigrants on that problem, from a self-declared economist on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilipSoos , to even the Reserve Bank here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-03/australia-briefing-rba-warns-on-migration.
So, if possible, could you write more about whether the problem with rental prices in this article could be really applied for Australia, if you could find data? You could just post as a comment here though.
Does he really think that immigrants in a housing desert like NH could have any effect on local housing prices? Even if it was being paid for by the refugee agencies, the assistance stops after one year. Then they, sadly, have to go somewhere where they can share housing costs with other, established, refugees, and THAT makes no difference to local rental rates.
Per the 2020 census, the United States of America saw the lowest ten-year population increase *in its history*. Yes, even lower than the 1930s. (And we ceased being a global leader in terms of net immigration rates many years ago: adjusted for scale, the US is at most a middling immigration power).
It would be a pretty sad state of affairs if the only way the US can bring relief to renters is by ratcheting down population growth even lower than its current, ahistorically depressed levels.
The GOP has fully transformed itself into the party to techno-pessimism and declinism. Sad!
I never voted for Trump but I thought he could be a positive force by making the GOP more of working class oriented party and China skeptical and obviously rooting out neocons (how could it get worse?). So I thought maybe the Trump acolytes that won elections would maybe not be con men like Trump while promoting Trump’s agenda…boy was I wrong! JD Vance is a huge disappointment and I actually liked the movie based on Hillbilly Elegy!?!
A lot of people responded to Vance’s tweets by saying “Just build more housing!”
Well we could fine tune that by saying, "Just allow building more housing where demand makes it profitable to do so."