Housing affordability is a major concern for Virginia renters, and a top priority for Virginia voters heading into the November elections. One-bedroom apartments in Virginia cost an average of $1,700. It is the only southern state to be ranked in the top 10. The main culprit is excessive immigration, which drives low income Americans out of high-density urban areas, causing a ripple effect when those renters move to cheaper counties.

Virginia is not the only state that has a housing crisis. Housing prices in the United States have increased by 47 percent since 2020, twice as fast as during the decade of 2010. Median household incomes however, have only increased by 22.5 percent.

Virginia has a worse situation than the majority of states.

Virginia’s rental vacancy is lower than the national median and it no longer only affects wealthy areas around Washington, D.C. According to the Zebra , an insurance comparison website, Virginia Beach is the worst city in the country for renters and Richmond is the ninth-worst. Richmond , Virginia Beach and the rest of the nation experienced the highest rent growth between 2023-2024. In Roanoke in southwest Virginia, over half of the renter population are cost burdened. They spend more than half their income for rent.

Virginia’s high rents coincide with increased immigration

Virginia’s rental crises haven’t just coincided with immigration that is higher than average. It has coincided with sharp spikes of higher-than average immigration.

In 1990, the state had just a little over 300,000. According to the Migration policy Institute, Virginia’s foreign born population grew by over 104 percent between 2000 and 2023. Its American-born residents grew by only 16 percent. In the period July 2023-2024 immigrants represented nearly three-fourths (74%) of the growth in population.

Virginia was ranked 2nd in the country in 2023 for its backlog of immigration court hearings. It took an average of over three years to hear from illegal aliens or asylum seekers.

In the years 2020-2024, about half (or 55,000) of Richmond’s new residents will be immigrants. Only 30 percent arrived between 2023-2024. This means that around 8,250 people moved to Richmond in a year. Rent is a major issue for the market because 90 percent immigrant households in the first two years of their stay in the U.S. rent.

Virginia’s strategic position as the home of many well-paid government jobs increases demand for service workers. This makes Virginia a natural magnet for immigration. However, an administration such as Joe Biden’s, which refuses to enforce immigration laws, artificially increases the state’s population of immigrants. Many state Democrats also support sanctuary cities policies which act as a magnet for illegal immigrants.

The border surge of former president Joe Biden did not provide the American workforce needed labor. By 2025, over half of the immigrants who had arrived during the three previous years were still not in the workforce. They all need housing, whether they are employed or not.

Virginia’s increased immigration Causes High rents due to supply and demand

In a market where housing is free, a rise in demand for rental housing will cause rents to spike until the housing supply catches-up. Immigration increases rental demand and lower-income Americans are outcompeted by immigrants because they’re more willing to live in crowded conditions. In addition, nonprofits, local governments, and other organizations often distort markets to subside immigrant families, further disadvantage low-income Americans.

Eight million immigrants will enter the U.S. thanks to Biden’s policies of open borders. Freddie Mac estimates that it would require 1.5 million more homes to accommodate them comfortably. They will take whatever they can, which is existing low-income housing for low-income Americans. Rent demand increased by 133 percent between 2022-2024 compared to the number of multifamily units that are completed each year.

A 2017 study by the Urban Institute found that an increase of one percent in immigrant populations in a metro statistical area (MSA), leads to a rent increase of 0.8 percent and a home price increase 0.8 percent in this MSA. In the surrounding MSAs however, this leads to a 1.6 % rise in rents and 9.6 % rise in home values.

Steven Camarota is the Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies . He told that his analysis showed that an increase of 5 percentage points in the share of recent immigrants in a MSA coincides with an increase of 12 percent in the rent of the average American-born family, in relation to their income.

The long-term benefits of increasing the population by are worth the pain for low-income Americans.

Vice President J.D. Vance has consistently resisted the popular opinion of elites on this. As a Senator, Vance asked Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell about immigration and housing affordability. Powell acknowledged that immigration might increase housing prices in certain areas. However, it is a topic economists should investigate further.

It is interesting to note that economists seem uninterested in the topic. This could be due to their allyship with corporate and institutional greed, their fear of being blacklisted or even ideological dogma. Legacy media can easily find a half dozen economists who will give the same talking point as any Democratic National Committee Communications director.

When Vance mentioned the housing issue briefly in the vice-presidential debate, a rare moment in which Tim Walz agreed with him, CBS News quoted economics who blamed the Great Recession for the housing inflation. Even if was the main cause of housing inflation, it wouldn’t make sense to add immigrants to the population if contractors can’t already build enough housing to house Americans.

The CATO Institute’s immigration policy analyst Alex Nowresteh flatly admits Vance was right, writing: “Immigration raises housing prices and that is okay.”

Nowresteh writes, “We must be truthful and intellectually rigorous in our writings about the impact of immigration on the United States.” Vance is right that immigrants are responsible for the rise in housing prices. “You can decide if that’s a good thing or not, but it should be accepted as truth.”

Nowresteh cites the example of Springfield, Ohio where Haitian immigrants have more than doubled their population in just a few short years. Redfin reports that the price of single-family houses in Springfield, Ohio increased from $78,500 to $158,000 by August 2024. This is a 101 percent rise, while nationwide, it was only 46 percent.

He writes: “That’s made Springfield renters and homebuyers worse off, while homeowners who are mainly native-born have a better deal.”

This is how he summarizes the successful Americans’ motivation to keep the border opened and foreigners inflowing. What about the poor and the rich? Libertarianism may not be for everyone.

RealClear Investigations spoke to 2 people in Logansport Indiana who denied vehemently that 2,000-5,001 Haitian immigrants were responsible for the town’s housing inflation. Both the mayor of the town and the local real estate agent had an incentive not to offend the new Haitian immigrants, whose purchasing power and political influence will only increase in Logansport, if Trump’s administration doesn’t remove them.

They cited Haitians’ willingness of 24 people to be crammed into one rental as a counter to the increase in demand. How many working-class American households with two incomes can compete in the rental market against a 12-income family?

Leftist nonprofits are often the ones to intervene when Americans compete. For instance, in 2020, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations Gave Richmond $250,000 to help illegal aliens who are not eligible for federal housing assistance. Many immigrants ask state governments to use their tax dollars when nonprofit funding is not available. Immigrant rights groups asked that the Virginia General Assembly offer rent assistance to illegal aliens and provide tenant protection so they don’t have live in a home with 10-15 other people.

How mass immigration to Fairfax County and Prince William County affects all Virginians

Concentrated immigration can have a ripple effect, driving up rents in the surrounding counties as natives are pushed out by immigrants. While immigrants in Virginia are concentrated in the northern counties of Richmond and in Northern Virginia, Central and Western Virginians pay a price when they move to these areas.

In a similar way to the Urban Policy Institute report mentioned above, a 2017 Analysis published in the Journal of Housing Economics revealed that “Immigration into a specific MSA is associated to increases in rents in house prices within that MSA and also seems to drive rents up in neighboring MSAs.”
Sanctuary Cities and Open Borders Create a Market Disruption in Immigration Distribution

Open borders and sanctuary city create a distortion of the market in terms of how many immigrants come to Virginia, and where they settle.

Northern Virginia and Richmond receive a healthy level of immigrants, but not so many as to push out the native working class Americans.

Biden increased migration to three times normal annual rates, making it impossible for native working families to compete with the third world peasants cramming in 12 or more people to a house.

Sanctuary cities increase the concentration of illegal immigrants, as well as legal immigrants with illegal relatives and friends. Local governments that refuse to cooperate with ICE send a message that certain counties and cities are open to an unchecked influx illegal aliens. This results in uneven settlement patterns and puts intense pressure on certain areas.

How to Help Families in Need in Virginia

A free market that is not distorted would allow all Virginians to find housing suitable for their income. The wealthy, middle-class, and poor would all be accommodated in each county and city with ease. It is important to eliminate the distortion of the market caused by the mass immigration of poor countries, which is especially harmful to the working poor in Virginia.

Virginia can’t afford to elect a Democrat Attorney General like Jay Jones, who refuses to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Virginia also cannot elect a General Assembly or Governor like Abigail Spanberger, who turns a blind-eye to defacto Sanctuary Cities.

In Virginia, there are more undocumented immigrants than Richmond’s population. ICE can only remove the majority of illegal aliens and discourage others from settling within Virginia through federal-state collaboration. It would also make it easier to repatriate many of their legal relatives. The loss of thousands of low skilled, low income renters would immediately heal the rental market and allow native, working class Virginians more jobs and lower priced apartments.

Effects on Construction Workers

Press and “experts” who support open borders worry that deporting illegal aliens in their millions would worsen housing shortages because one third of construction workers are immigrants. The number of those without authorization to work is far lower.

The Center for American Progress estimated that 23 per cent of construction workers were illegal aliens. A Cornell University think-tank put at 17 percent and the American Immigration Council placed as low as 14. percent.

Illegal alien workers are more than twice as likely to be employed in low-skilled jobs like ceiling tile installers and roofers. These jobs can all be taught by an 18-year old American within a week.

The housing that would be created by the removal of illegal aliens could also offset any temporary slowdown in construction during the transition to a worker-based economy. This would also drive out the worst contractors, thereby improving the quality of housing.

The growing number of immigrants has increased the difficulty for Virginians with low incomes to find rental housing. Renters in the United States are forced to move further away from metropolitan areas, which is both economically and socially damaging. Rents in small towns rise when Americans who used to work in blue-collar jobs and in service industries flee the city. The business elite thrives in this scenario because of a lax labor market. Meanwhile, the American working class is pushed into poverty.

This article first appeared on Rental crisis in Virginia is driven by mass immigration