The challenges facing the housing market were among the issues raised during Tuesday evening’s debate between the two major vice-presidential candidates, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
Walz advocated for the “bold forward plan that Kamala Harris put out there,” which includes $25,000 in down payment assistance for certain first-time homebuyers and a goal of 3 million new homes being built over the next four years. Walz stated that “we could talk a little bit about Wall Street speculators buying up housing and making them less affordable.”
“The problem we’ve had is that we’ve got a lot of folks that see housing as another commodity – it can be bought up, it can be shifted, it can be moved around.,” Walz said. “Those are not folks living in those houses.”
Walz insisted that “we don’t have enough naturally affordable housing, but we can make sure that the government’s there to help kickstart it, create that, create that base.”
Vance called attention to Harris’ position as an incumbent vice president and questioned why she never enacted any of her current proposals while she was the number two person in the Executive Branch.
“If she wants to enact all of these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite her to use the office that the American people already gave her, not sit around and campaign and do nothing while Americans find the American Dream of homeownership completely unaffordable,” Vance said.
Vance echoed former President Donald Trump’s focus on the impact of energy on housing costs.
“If a truck driver is paying 40% more for diesel, then the lumber he’s delivering to the job site to build the house is also going to become a lot more expensive,” he said. “If we open up American energy, you will get immediate pricing release, relief, for American citizens, not, by the way, just in housing, but in a whole host of other economic goods too.”
One of the debate’s moderator, CBS News personality Margaret Brennan, sought to trip up Vance when she asked for evidence on the impact of illegal immigration on housing.
“Well, there’s a Federal Reserve study that we’re happy to share after the debate – we’ll put it up on social media,” Vance continued. “Actually, that really drills down on the connection between increased levels of migration, especially illegal immigration, and higher housing prices. Now, of course, Margaret, that’s not the entire driver of higher housing prices. It’s also the regulatory regime of Kamala Harris. Look, we are a country of builders. We’re a country of doers. We’re a country of explorers. But we increasingly have a federal administration that makes it harder to develop our resources, makes it harder to build things, and wants to throw people in jail for not doing everything exactly as Kamala Harris says that they have to do. And what that means is that you have a lot of people who would love to build homes who aren’t able to build homes. I actually agree with Tim Walz. We should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity. But the thing that has most turned housing into a commodity is giving it away to millions upon millions of people who have no legal right to be here.”
Photo courtesy of CBS News
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