Tom Steyer: Americans Must Provide Cheap Housing to Illegal Immigrants

Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and Democrat 2020 candidate, wants Americans to provide cheap housing to illegal immigrants.

“A Steyer Administration will … ensure that all undocumented communities have access to affordable and safe housing,” Steyer said in his immigration proposal.

Steyer’s offer of housing is combined with promises to provide illegals with free healthcare, plus workplace training and cultural celebrations:

A Steyer administration … [will] provide a safe platform for immigrants to share their culture and celebrate their heritage, foster opportunities for public service that support new Americans, and coordinate with Federal agencies and the private sector in order to build workforce training and fellowship opportunities for immigrants with professional qualifications from their home nation to help them leverage their specialized skills in the American marketplace.

Steyer made his promise of cheap housing to illegals even though housing costs for many Americans forces them to rent or buy cheaper housing far from work and friends, and are being forced to give up hopes for larger families.

But those housing costs are high partly because the federal government welcomes one million new legal immigrants into the nation’s cities, neighborhoods, and schools. That is a huge inflow — four million young Americans turn 18 each year.

But Steyer is a billionaire investor, so illegal migrants will not be moving into his very expensive and well policed neighborhood. The New Yorker magazine described his house in 2013:

President [barack Obama] flew to San Francisco on April 3rd for a series of fund-raisers. He stopped in first at a cocktail reception hosted by Tom Steyer, a fifty-six-year-old billionaire, former hedge-fund manager, and major donor to the Democratic Party. Steyer lives in the city’s Sea Cliff neighborhood, in a house overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Any inflow of migrants will be a boon to Steyer’s fellow investors who gain from the extra workers, consumers, and renters. For example, one gauge of real estate investments shows a 50 percent gain since 2015, even as Americans’ wages and salaries rose by only about 15 percent.

Meanwhile, Steyer’s home state is experiencing record housing prices and record homelessness as today’s illegals enjoy the state government’s offer of sanctuary, jobs, and welfare. The federal housing agency reported January 7 the state has about 108,000 homeless:

This year’s report shows that there was a small increase in the one-night estimates of people experiencing homelessness across the nation between 2018 and 2019 (three percent), which reflects a 16 percent increase in California, and offsets a marked decrease across many other states.

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In terms of absolute numbers, California has more than half of all unsheltered homeless people in the country (53 percent or 108,432), with nearly nine times as many unsheltered homeless as the state with the next highest number, Florida (six percent or 12,476), despite California’s population being only twice that of Florida.

In September Breitbart News reported the Census Bureau showed how the state’s housing costs are pushing Americans into poverty:

The September 10 study shows 18.2 percent of California’s population is poor, far above the 13 percent poverty rate in Arkansas, 16 percent in Mississippi, and the 14.6 percent in West Virginia.

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By 2017, for example, the government’s pro-migration policies had added 11 million people to the state’s native population of 29 million people. The huge inflow means that one-in-four residents are immigrants.

Numerous studies have shown many millions of foreigners want to migrate into Americans’ society. For example, another five million Central American residents want to migrate into the United States, according to a Gallup survey published right after the 2018 midterm elections.

Gallup also noted “three percent of the world’s adults — or nearly 160 million people — say they would like to move to the U.S.”

Steyer’s promise to welcome illegals is echoed by the other investor billionaire in the Democrats’ primary, Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. In January, he promised to make illegals comfortable with Americans’ money, telling the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Well, it’s a no brainer. You give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million people. We’re not going to deport them anyways, it’s outrageous. If you look in New York City, we make sure that people felt comfortable, regardless of their immigration status, to come and get city services. I was always determined that they would not be afraid to come. Somebody could need like life-threatening things and does not get medical care. This is not a game. You’ve got to make sure that they’re okay.

Housing costs in Bloomberg’s New York are very high because it has huge populations of illegal and legal immigrants. The result is that it has a homeless population of roughly 92,000, and also the nation’s highest rate of homelessness, at 46 homeless for every 10,000 people.

High housing costs also make it difficult for Americans to move into towns and cities that have better-paying jobs, according to a 2017 study about the rising wealth gap in the United States. Americans “are frozen where they live,” said Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at a January 9 meeting. 

But nearly all of the Democrats in the 2020 election have called for more migrants — without showing any concern for the impact on Americans’ housing costs.

“We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million people,” Joe Biden told Democrats at an August event in Des Moines, Iowa. “The idea that a country of 330 million people is cannot absorb people who are in desperate need … is absolutely bizarre … I would also move to increase the total number of immigrants able to come to the United States.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s immigration plan, for example, is titled “A Fair and Welcoming Immigration System.” It says:

We need expanded legal immigration that will grow our economy, reunite families, and meet our labor market demands … s president, I will immediately issue guidance to end criminal prosecutions for simple administrative immigration violations … As President, I’ll issue guidance ensuring that detention is only used where it is actually necessary because an individual poses a flight or safety risk … I’ll welcome 125,000 refugees in my first year, and ramping up to at least 175,000 refugees per year by the end of my first term.

The impact of federal immigration policy on Americans’ housing costs is taboo among establishment reporters. But those costs were touted by a group of investors lobbying Congress to raise housing prices by importing more immigrants. A booklet by the Economic Innovation Group says:

The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand … As a result, a shrinking population will lead to falling prices and a deteriorating, vacancy-plagued housing stock that may take generations to clear

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The potential for skilled immigrants to boost local housing markets is clear. Notably, economist Albert Saiz (2007) found a 1% increase in population from immigration causes housing rents and house prices in U.S. cities to rise commensurately, by 1%

On January 9, Donohue noted New Yorkers blocked the plan by Amazon and the city government to build a new corporate headquarters in the city. The residents protested the development plan partly because it would have driven up rents and housing costs, said Donohue. “It is a very potent issue,” he observed.