Exploring JD Vance's stance on housing affordability

Ohio senator JD Vance, former president Donald Trump's recently chosen running mate, has garnered national attention, partially for his controversial ideas for resolving the housing affordability crisis. 

"Not having 20 million illegal aliens who need to be housed (often at public expense) will absolutely make housing more affordable for American citizens," Vance said in a June X post. The senator was responding to a post claiming that Trump's policies won't make homes more affordable. 

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Vance first got into politics in 2021 when he began his campaign for the Ohio Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman who opted not to seek a third term. Vance won the seat with 53.3% of the vote.

In the 2022 senate race, one of Vance's top donors was Rock Holdings, according to OpenSecrets. Rock Holdings owns Rocket Mortgage and Amrock among other companies. Another donor was the private equity firm Blackstone Group, which sports the Blackstone REIT and a $600 billion global real estate portfolio. 

In the past, Vance was critical of some of Trump's moves. Before the former president's win in the 2016 election, Sen. Vance repeatedly questioned Trump's character. Since then, they have established some common ground. 

The senator has often called the nature of the southern border a "crisis" and eventually called for the funding and construction of Trump's border wall, according to NPR. Appearing on Fox News in June, Sen. Vance said the United States should carry out "large-scale deportations." 

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The Republican presidential candidate has been historically vocal on the subject of immigration, and his 2024 campaign platform includes the goal to "seal the border and stop the migrant invasion."

While in the Senate, Vance has sought to tackle issues related to immigration through multiple bill proposals. In January, the senator solidified his agreement with Trump with a bill calling for temporary fencing within 25 miles of the southwest border to deter illegal immigration. 

The senator also introduced legislation in March to disallow sanctuary jurisdictions from receiving community development block grants. Sanctuary jurisdictions limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities to protect undocumented immigrants. The bill would prevent those areas from receiving funding for affordable housing, infrastructure development and anti-poverty programs. 

Both proposed bills were referred to their respective committees after reading and no action has been taken on them since.

He also voted against the Border Act of 2024, which would authorize emergency supplemental appropriations for border security and enact measures to combat the fentanyl crisis.

In the first presidential debate of this election season, housing affordability was hardly mentioned, but Trump said he's making efforts to lower broader inflation. President Biden, the only candidate to address housing affordability explicitly, recently announced his proposal of the Biden-Harris Housing Plan that involved a 5% cap on rent increases, which received pushback from mortgage industry leaders. With the news over the weekend that Biden will be stepping out of the race, the successor he endorsed, Vice President Kamala Harris, is likely to continue supporting the current administration's initiatives. 

In a Senate Banking Committee hearing on rural housing legislation last May, Sen. Vance said the housing crisis is partially caused by the more lax immigration policies of the Biden administration and Democratic Party. 

"I want to focus on one of the under-discussed components of the housing crisis in our country today, and that is its connection to mass illegal immigration," said Vance to witnesses. "I think that a lot of our friends on the other side of the aisle have convinced themselves that lax immigration is somehow a compassionate thing to do." 

To support his argument, Sen. Vance cited what he described as historically precedented increases in housing costs and rents following mass immigration into countries, metro areas and counties. 

Starter homes have been the most impacted by the housing inventory shortage, and thus their prices have remained elevated. Immigrants typically settle down in neighborhoods with the lowest housing values. Sen. Vance said in the hearing that as a result, many other Americans are unable to enter the housing market.

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"In the neighborhood where you have the highest inflow of immigration, you also have declining home prices," said Senator Vance. "Rich people who have homes in low immigration areas benefit from mass immigration policies and everybody else finds the American dream of homeownership further and further away because we've effectively invited five to 10 million people into our country to break our laws." 

Senator Vance said he believes that mass immigration into America has driven up housing costs due to increased competition. 

"We cannot, as a country, absorb 10 million people and still provide high-quality housing to the rest of our citizens," said Senator Vance to witnesses. "The math doesn't work, the numbers don't make sense, the increase in housing prices and rents is clear for all to see."

Senator Vance has not spoken publicly about his strategies to hypothetically carry out a mass deportation, although former Trump officials said resources would be needed from government agencies like the Pentagon in order to relocate migrants, according to NBC News. 

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Vance also said in June that he condemns allowing foreign investors to buy up American farmland and single-family homes. In his 2022 race, he received significant donations from PLK Properties, a provider of multifamily homes in Ohio, according to OpenSecrets. The senator said he is in favor of "a true pro-family policy combined with lower housing costs, and of course combined with getting illegal aliens out of our country that are poisoning our streets." During his Senate campaign, Vance blamed those investors for hurting the middle class and making it harder for potential first-time homebuyers to enter the market. 

"When these hedge funds take special government privileges and go and buy up all the single-family homes, what they're doing is destroying wealth in this country," said Sen. Vance during his 2021 candidacy. 

Although former President Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a major restructuring plan that would impact all government agencies involved in financial services, some believe a second Trump administration would pursue many of the initiatives described therein. The plan includes breaking up HUD, raising the FHA's mortgage insurance premiums, unwinding the CFPB and releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from conservatorship. It would also limit the Federal Reserve's ability to intervene in the mortgage-backed securities market, among other plans. 

Project 2025 was developed by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank that also has ties to JD Vance. 

Vance is a member of the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and has supported deep cuts in the HUD budget. He told Business Insider last year that spending reductions on HUD are necessary to control broader inflation, which also contributes to higher housing costs. He said that those cuts could be made while preserving housing assistance for families. 

"It's being positioned as congressional Republicans are heartless because they want to pass these spending cuts," Vance told Business Insider last year. "Well, I think the more heartless thing to do would be to do nothing, to allow the inflation to continue to spiral out of control, higher interest rates, higher rent payments, higher mortgage payments for American families."

Prior to the news that Biden would not seek reelection, a debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and the Ohio senator had been scheduled to take place on either July 23 or Aug. 13 CBS News.