The Trump administration barred Wall Street purchases of American homes and stopped housing benefits for people in the country illegally over the past 18 months, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said.
Vance presented those actions as a response to housing costs that he blamed partly on immigration and purchases by financial firms and foreign investors. He did not give figures showing how much the actions had reduced costs or how many homes they affected.
The White House published the recording, “VP JD Vance on How Democrats Increased Housing Costs — & How The Trump Administration Is Fixing It”, on Oct. 30. The remarks were the administration’s own account of its housing policies.
Vance began by describing access to housing as part of a broader effort to help young people afford the basic elements of the American dream. He included good health care, a good job and the ability to buy a home among those goals.
“Our entire party, our entire movement” is focused on making those things affordable, Vance said, adding that he believed the president shared that focus. He described the goal as allowing people who work hard and follow the rules to obtain a job and buy a house.
Turning to the causes of higher housing costs, Vance blamed part of the increase on people entering the United States illegally. He put their number at 20 million and said they had come to buy homes that should go to American citizens.
He gave no source or time period for that figure. His remarks also supplied no count of home purchases by those people or measure of their contribution to housing costs.
Vance next blamed purchases by Wall Street and foreign investors for making homes more expensive. He argued that American citizens should have access to the homes those buyers acquired.
He then listed removing people in the country illegally, stopping their housing benefits and banning Wall Street home purchases as actions the administration had taken. “We’ve done all of that in the last 18 months,” Vance said.
The remarks did not identify the measures behind the claimed ban, define which Wall Street buyers it covered or explain how it operated. Vance also left open whether the administration had restricted purchases by foreign investors, whom he had named separately as a cause of higher costs.
