Leigh Thomas Brown argues that supply-side solutions and subsidies miss the real drivers of high housing costs. He links expensive housing to undocumented immigration and job competition, and says we're asking the wrong questions about density and development.
that the FHA director is talking about, oh yeah, we need more houses, we don't need more subsidies. Can we please, at some point, at some point, we have got people to get them to— I can't speak straight this morning. At some point, we are going to have to get people to understand that a big part of our housing crisis is not the supply side. The only answer you are hearing from elected officials is that we need more houses, but none of them have the stones to address the fact that we still have an unknown millions of people in the country who aren't supposed to be here. Now, that does not mean that I'm against immigration. So before you get all wound up in the comments, just understand that any country is going to be taken out if you have a huge influx that does not assimilate. And that's what's been going on. And so if you look at the housing crisis that we have and the way prices have been driven up, more subsidies, well, who's going to get them? I'm just going to ask you that because we already have a problem where it's not a level playing field for everybody. And if we actually did see the people in this country illegally who are taking jobs from Americans, they're gone. What would happen to the housing crisis? Well, suddenly you'd have houses on the market and suddenly prices would fall. We will be having an entirely different conversation, but we're not supposed to have that conversation, right? We're not supposed to talk like that. We're supposed to assume everything has to stay artificially high and that we have to make everything denser and denser and denser. What if some communities don't want density? Just saying, that's what you're going to have to be willing to talk about.
