OPINION:
A comforting lie is taking hold on the political right about the housing crisis: that once illegal immigration is solved, housing affordability will essentially solve itself.
Illegal immigration clearly makes housing less affordable. It can’t be said enough: The scale of the Biden-era surge — more than 6 million in a few years — has placed real pressure on rents. I applaud the administration’s efforts on illegal immigration.
Still, it’s a mistake to think the housing crisis is the immigration problem, and it’s a dangerous one. It offers the emotional satisfaction of killing two birds with one stone while letting conservatives avoid the harder structural reforms that housing actually needs. It gives the liberal housing regime that created the crisis in the first place a pass, and it surrenders our best chance to reestablish the American birthright of property rights.
The federal government’s 2025 “Worst Case Housing Needs” report to Congress quietly proves this point, even as some attempt to use it to justify the lie.
The report clearly indicates a significant problem in housing, including only 38 units for every 100 very low-income households. A little over 8 million households faced “worst-case housing needs,” meaning they paid more than half their income on rent, lived in severely inadequate housing, or both. Since the Great Recession, worst-case needs have averaged around 8 million households, far higher than the 5 million before 2007 — a reminder that America never fully recovered from the financial crisis.
The housing crisis did not begin with the Biden border surge, and it won’t end with it.
The report also recognizes that declining marriage rates increase housing demand and that loose monetary policy inflated home prices: Assets surged as the dollar weakened. It further concedes that demand-side subsidies can drive up rents in already tight markets.
Yes, the report plainly states that mass immigration has increased housing demand.
Demand growth is not the core problem. We can see that just by looking at the reality of building in America. We do not face a natural housing shortage under a free market; we face a government planning problem. It’s a shortage imposed by zoning, permitting and land-use rules that bar Americans from building homes in the places and forms property owners and developers would otherwise choose.
It’s why affordability remains broken even as the report notes the largest increase in apartment construction since the early 1970s and record-high housing units per capita in 2024.
However, as the report acknowledges, it was a delayed response after years of regulatory repression. Supply that arrives late, is expensive and is approved by planners is not the same as supply driven by property owners, builders and consumers acting freely.
Also, this is likely the high-water mark. Apartment construction increased so dramatically in 2024 in part because of temporarily lower interest rates and because many of those projects were permitted back in 2022 and 2023.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: Even if border enforcement were fully effective and net illegal immigration were no longer adding to the demand, the housing crisis would persist.
In 2024, there were roughly 3.6 million births in the United States, grossly outpacing the 1.36 million housing units started that year. This means that even domestic population growth puts real pressure on housing demand.
If conservatives want to govern, not just campaign, then they must secure property rights against the planners. Markets cannot work where building is illegal, discretionary or endlessly litigated.
Every layer of government can add to the housing solution.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should reward jurisdictions that permit housing to be built by right, rather than by permission.
Congress should pass the ROAD Act and repeal outdated rules, such as the permanent steel-chassis requirement for manufactured homes, that artificially raise costs and suppress the most affordable form of homeownership.
States should preempt local governments and empower their citizens, as Montana and other states have demonstrated.
Cities should follow the example of places like Houston, where simpler rules return responsibility to property owners, builders and consumers.
Even quasi-governmental institutions, such as building code authorities and engineering standards bodies, could expand the supply through reforms as basic as allowing single-stair apartment buildings.
The real solution won’t be found in overly convenient talking points; it will be in restoring property rights and empowering the American people with the freedom to build, own and improve our communities from the bottom up. Real housing reform means recommitting to what made America prosperous in the first place: our American birthright of property rights.
• David Rand is a political and communications consultant. He is the president and CEO of the forthcoming Land Liberty Movement, a national nonprofit focused on housing and property rights.
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