DHS and HUD Team Up to Tackle Illegal Immigration and Housing Affordability

In a move to kill two birds with one stone, the Trump administration is simultaneously tackling both illegal immigration and the U.S. housing crisis.

In a “Memorandum of Understanding” signed Monday, the U.S. departments of Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development agreed to work together to ensure that taxpayer-funded public housing is afforded to American citizens, not to illegal immigrants.

“To advance President [Donald] Trump’s promise to protect critical taxpayer-funded housing programs designed to assist American citizens, we commit to ending the wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens instead of assisting American citizens,” the memo stated.

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It continued, “We will safeguard precious taxpayer resources, and we will stop the harmful practices of the former Biden administration, which favored and prioritized illegal aliens over American citizens in the expenditure of housing funds and subsidies.”

DHS and HUD will work together to identify illegal immigrants taking advantage of public housing and “take remedial measures to end this waste and abuse, including referral for immigration enforcement actions,” according to the memo. The memo also says that ensuring illegal immigrants cannot access taxpayer-funded housing programs meant for American citizens will “incentivize illegal aliens to voluntarily depart the country … ”

In a press briefing ahead of signing the memorandum, HUD Secretary Scott Turner explained, “We have a housing affordability crisis in our country, and so today we are ensuring that American taxpayer dollars are used to assist the American people.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, explained, “The Biden administration’s open border and housing benefit policies created terrible results for our country and Americans.”

She continued, “Such benefits facilitated illegal residence in the U.S. and encouraged more illegal immigration, which created a significant fiscal drain on American taxpayers because it provided benefits to inadmissible aliens instead of American citizens and increased the cost of both homes and rentals due to large populations, high demand, and low supply.”

Vice President JD Vance has repeatedly pointed out the link between illegal immigration and increased housing prices in the U.S. 

Speaking at a National League of Cities event this month, the vice president explained, “When we talk about housing and why costs are so high, we don’t talk enough about demand, and one of the drivers of increased housing demand is that we’ve got a lot of people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally.”

He added, “That’s something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of housing. … We want Americans to be able to afford the American dream of home ownership.”

Vance also raised the issue in last year’s vice presidential debate.

“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country … you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” the then-senator said. 

Springfield, neighboring Tremont City, the small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi, and other towns were treated to an influx of mostly Haitian immigrants under the Biden administration, resulting in drastically increased housing and rent prices.

According to numerous reports, immigrants were given preference over American citizens for taxpayer-funded housing programs, allowing the immigrants to pay much more in rent than the Americans who had been living in those towns for generations. In some cases, landlords even moved American families out of apartments in order to accommodate higher-paying immigrants.

According to Center for Immigration Studies Research Director Steven Camarota, nearly 60% of illegal immigrant households receive some form of taxpayer-funded welfare, costing American taxpayers at least $42 billion.

In a statement shared with The Washington Stand, Camarota explained, “Adding millions of people to the country through immigration drives up the cost of housing and reduces affordability relative to wages in areas of heavy settlement. Fiscally, illegal immigrants are a net drain—they create more in costs than they pay in taxes.”

He continued, “Prior research shows that by increasing demand for housing, immigration drives up costs in areas where immigrants settle. My own analysis indicates that a 5-percentage-point increase in the recent immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12% increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent, relative to their income.”

“The Census Bureau reports that the increase in rents in 2023 was by far the largest in the past decade. This is certainly consistent with the possibility that immigration, including illegal immigration, has significantly increased housing prices in areas of heavy immigrant settlement,” Camarota observed.

He continued, “Immigration likely impacts the housing market in complex ways. For example, along with driving up demand for housing, it can also lower construction costs by reducing wages in the construction industry. On the other hand, it may indirectly impact affordability by reducing wages, making housing relatively more costly.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand