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.
“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.”
We are seeing a similar thing in the Gay Frisco area.
One son and his wife and new baby bought a new home in the outer East Bay area. His friends decided to rent in our area and buy later. Only one has bought in their home area, 2 married medical professionals. Others are still renting 20 years later.
Our contractor is in the same fix. He and his wife are renting.
This groups’s parents, (all of us) are living past our 70’s into our 80’s. Many of us have opted for reverse mortgages.
We are hearing of couples our son’s age, moving back in with their parents while their kids are in college or finishing college.
One of the hottest new homes being built are the “Granny or Mother-in-law” homes. Smaller one or two br homes with small kitchens on the ‘kid’s properties.