Does Immigration Drive Up Housing Costs?

Mark Krikorian; Jason Richwine

By Mark Krikorian and Jason Richwine on August 27, 2026

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Summary

The connection between immigration and housing costs is the subject of this week’s episode of the Center for Immigration Studies’ Parsing Immigration Policy podcast. Jason Richwine, a resident scholar at the Center, discusses his forthcoming study, scheduled for publication this fall in the peer-reviewed journal Cityscape.

The large majority of academic studies find a positive relationship between immigration and housing prices, with relatively little debate over the basic nexus. Richwine’s research updates the evidence using 2014 and 2023 data and examines the effects of increased immigration on rents across nearly 1,700 public-use microdata areas (PUMAs).

Among the findings:

A 1 percentage-point increase in the foreign-born share is associated with approximately a 1.5 percent increase in rents paid by natives, when direct and spillover effects are included.
Immigration in one area also raises rents in surrounding areas, creating a ripple effect beyond the community experiencing the initial increase.
Housing construction cannot necessarily respond quickly enough to accommodate large, sudden increases in population, while restrictions on new construction and opposition to higher-density housing further constrain supply.

Richwine also discusses research linking higher housing costs to lower fertility and increases in the sheltered homeless population, arguing that the difficulty of rapidly expanding housing supply is another reason to favor "lower and slower" immigration.

In the episode’s commentary, CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian discusses a NYT article reporting a private meeting between Jared Kushner and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries about potential areas of immigration policy agreement. Krikorian considers what the administration can do to reassure immigration restriction supporters that it will not compromise on its agenda, including more aggressive workplace enforcement and further measures to tighten legal immigration.