Housing inflation isn't some mystery. It's policy. All the way down.
The Biden administration ran an open-border policy. Tens of millions of border encounters over a compressed period. Millions allowed into the country while the immigration system buckled. That was not a natural market event.
When you dump a massive number of people into a country over a short period, many without the skills, capital, or income to immediately carry their own weight, you create pressure everywhere. Schools. Hospitals. Municipal budgets. And housing.
If millions of additional people need a place to live and supply doesn't expand at the same pace, prices go up. Rents go up. Families living paycheck to paycheck get squeezed harder. Young people trying to buy their first home get pushed further from the starting line.
The research backs this up. The Philadelphia Fed's Albert Saiz found that an immigration inflow equal to 1% of a city's population was associated with roughly a 1% increase in rents and housing values. He studied the Mariel Boatlift as a natural experiment. Miami's renter population rose ~9% in one year and rents rose ~8% more than comparison cities.
Fed officials have started saying this out loud. Governor Miran cited Saiz directly and argued that net zero immigration going forward would imply roughly 1 percentage point lower rent inflation per year compared to the prior baseline.
The same policymakers that gave us monetary debasement, rate suppression, and open-border chaos want to act like housing inflation is an unfortunate weather pattern. It's not.
They printed the money. They suppressed rates. They let housing become a financial asset first and a place to live second. They strangled supply with zoning and regulation. Then they layered a massive immigration-driven demand shock on top of a market that was already broken.
And ordinary Americans got the bill.
The Biden administration ran an open-border policy. Tens of millions of border encounters over a compressed period. Millions allowed into the country while the immigration system buckled. That was not a natural market event.
When you dump a massive number of people into a country over a short period, many without the skills, capital, or income to immediately carry their own weight, you create pressure everywhere. Schools. Hospitals. Municipal budgets. And housing.
If millions of additional people need a place to live and supply doesn't expand at the same pace, prices go up. Rents go up. Families living paycheck to paycheck get squeezed harder. Young people trying to buy their first home get pushed further from the starting line.
The research backs this up. The Philadelphia Fed's Albert Saiz found that an immigration inflow equal to 1% of a city's population was associated with roughly a 1% increase in rents and housing values. He studied the Mariel Boatlift as a natural experiment. Miami's renter population rose ~9% in one year and rents rose ~8% more than comparison cities.
Fed officials have started saying this out loud. Governor Miran cited Saiz directly and argued that net zero immigration going forward would imply roughly 1 percentage point lower rent inflation per year compared to the prior baseline.
The same policymakers that gave us monetary debasement, rate suppression, and open-border chaos want to act like housing inflation is an unfortunate weather pattern. It's not.
They printed the money. They suppressed rates. They let housing become a financial asset first and a place to live second. They strangled supply with zoning and regulation. Then they layered a massive immigration-driven demand shock on top of a market that was already broken.
And ordinary Americans got the bill.
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