This is why the US will not deport the 30 million illegals. It would collapse the real estate market - particularly in states like California.
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You say that as though that’s a bad thing.
Personally, I think it’s great... But some high powered investors and Mortgage Banks might not agree. It will be the real estate crash of 2008 all over again.
I’m familiar with the Vancouver area rental situation and I would disagree with the assertions made in that case.
The main reason why rentals are costly in that market is that the bottom two thirds of the socio-economic demographic are priced out of the ownership market and have no other option than rental. With the supply of new rental units restricted by the better profit opportunities available in condominium and town house (ownership) projects on the same land, the rental rates can be kept high enough to induce anyone who doesn’t have to live in the region to move away to somewhere more affordable. That means mainly retiring seniors who were renting and working, and students or young adults with less than average paying jobs who can find work out of town. So those two components are moving away. Immigrants are less likely to want to settle out of the large city for two reasons, less social support and fewer jobs they can easily get. But I didn’t see much evidence of “white flight” because of immigrant aversion, it was more of a white flight because of wanting to have more disposable income.
In our own case, we are now paying half the rent in a small town in BC than we paid in metro Vancouver, while our pension income is 80% of the former employment income.
With other costs only marginally different, you can see that the math is compelling, why stay in the larger city when you can increase your disposable income even with a lower gross income? There are no downsides at all other than a few minor issues like less comprehensive health care within an hour commute or former social ties lost.
Not sure how this would transfer to the U.S. situation, but it’s not immigrants driving up rental prices in Vancouver, except indirectly, because perhaps you could argue that offshore investors are driving up the value of the housing market (ownership not rental). Most of them don’t actually become immigrants or they send one family member to squat in the investment until they decide it’s time to make the move (many are wealthy Chinese who want an out in case China totally collapses).
Things like Muslim immigration are almost non-factors in British Columbia. There has been some but social tensions are absent because we already had quite a mixture of Asian immigrant communities and there is a certain amount of live and let live as the general rule, plus by luck perhaps more than design, we have only attracted Muslims from higher functioning countries like Kuwait and Egypt and not that many from Syria and Libya, so they tend to blend in. Also most are wealthy enough to own rather than rent. The same can be said for the Indo-Canadian community, most immigrants that I met in rental settings were from the Balkans, Vancouver has a fairly sizeable Serbo-Croatian community. Chinese Canadians are very ownership oriented and will take extraordinary measures to get away from rental as quickly as possible.
Most of the rental market in Vancouver is for the children of long-time white residents of the region who are priced out of the ownership market and have too long to wait to inherit their parents’ homes (where some are sort of trapped in by high taxes despite full equity or near the end of paying down a much smaller mortgage than they can refinance). It’s a strange market in some ways, probably similar to some other “world class” cities around the Pacific rim like Sydney, Honolulu or maybe Seattle, San Fran or San Jose.
Perhaps you have forgotten the primary industry of our president and his SIL?
“You say that as though that’s a bad thing.”
LOL.
A 200 sq ft studio with a Murphy bed & a 2 burner hotplate is worth $250 a month, maximum, IMO.
Not $2500.
Rent subsidies have driven housing costs UP by guaranteeing slumlords will get over $1000 per month for hovels that would go for 1/4 that on the free market.
Working poor are forced to compete with unemployed & illegals, not for housing, but for for housing *vouchers,* the availability of which are controlled by the government.
Bring back free market rents (i.e. what renters are willing/ able to pay) and enforce immigration law & homelessness will disappear.