• Homebuilding industry executives say President-elect Donald Trump’s eviction plans could worsen the labor shortage.
• The industry relies heavily on immigrant labor and companies fear a reduction in their workforce.
• Homebuilders and economists have said a more serious labor shortage could lead to higher housing costs.

Homebuilding industry executives and economists say President-elect Donald Trump plans to implement the “largest eviction effort in American history” could set off a chain reaction that ultimately drives up real estate prices.

The problem is construction labor, of which Shortage of 500,000 workers already makes conditions more difficult. Even fewer workers would mean fewer homes completed. This shortage of stocks then results in an increase in prices.

Because immigrants make up a large portion of this group, housing economists and homebuilders worry that evictions and enforcement will worsen the current shortage, eventually leading to further price increases.

Foreign-born workers represent about a quarter of the construction workforce. A estimated 15 to 23% of this overall workforce are undocumented immigrants. Foreign-born workers are particularly overrepresented in residential construction tradesincluding plastering, drywalling and painting.

Eric Finnigan, vice president of demographic research at John Burns, told Business Insider that if mass evictions occur, many home construction, renovations and repairs “shut down and/or prices increase significantly.”

Even before concrete steps are taken, the mere prospect of a crackdown could spook workers and hurt the construction industry, economists and homebuilders say.

“The threat will be felt immediately and very viscerally among people who work in the construction industry,” Ben Metcalf, a housing policy expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider.

“Just talking about mass deportations could send a chill to the entire immigrant employment sector,” added Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have repeatedly pushed back against these notions. From the perspective of real estate prices, they said that the expulsion of immigrants reduce housing costs by reducing the demand for housing.

In a September AddressTrump said Americans should not “ignore the impact” that millions of illegal aliens have had on rising housing costs.

Vance also recently refuted the idea that deportations and stricter immigration would deplete the construction workforce, arguing that large numbers of displaced American workers are willing to take those jobs.

“One of the really messed up things that illegal immigration does to our society is that it leads us to think that we can only build houses with illegal immigrants, when we have seven million of them – just men, not even women, just men – who have completely abandoned the job market,” he said in the interview.

An uncertain future for immigration

Evictions are logistically difficult And Dearand it is not clear how widespread the repression will be. During his first term, Trump oversaw an initial surge in deportations, but his administration far fewer people were deported – about 1.5 million – than former President Barack Obama. The Obama administration deported 2.9 million people in its first term and 1.9 million in its second, while President Joe Biden is in the process of being deleted about the same number of people as Trump.

Trump too intensification of raids on workplaces by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during his first term, and his new “border czar” Tom Homan recently promised to intensify the raids again. “If you’re in this country illegally in six months, pack your bags, because you’re going home,” Vance said. said in September.

Beyond mass moves, many construction employers are also concerned about more restrictive legal immigration policies. Many immigrants working in the industry are protected by certain special legal programs, such as Deferred action for child arrivals And Temporary protection statuswhich were strengthened under Biden but which could be finished by Trump.

“These programs are particularly likely to be shut down very quickly, which would leave construction companies in the lurch,” Chad Blocker, a Los Angeles-based immigration lawyer, told Business Insider.

A shortage of workers

A few economists disagree with the Trump campaign’s argument that deporting immigrants would alleviate housing affordability problems by reducing demand. They argue that soaring real estate costs are largely the result of the nationwide housing shortage, and that immigrants play a key role in housing construction.

Homebuilders pushed back against Vance’s comments that a readily available U.S. workforce is sitting on the sidelines, waiting for construction job offers.

During the pandemic, many older, experienced workers retired, and the pipeline of younger, U.S.-born workers retired. is not enoughsay homebuilders. They note that with the rise of remote work and the technology sector, construction jobs are not particularly attractive to young people.

“There aren’t a lot of people who want to get on a roof when it’s 120 degrees outside,” Dennis Webb, a home builder in Phoenix, told Business Insider. “They want to work in an air-conditioned office, they want to be behind a computer and they don’t really want to do manual labor.”

Are you an immigrant homebuilder or construction worker concerned about developments in immigration policy or enforcement? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected].