Rising immigration is fueling a surge in housing costs across Texas, especially in cities like Dallas, where rents and home prices have ballooned in recent years.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Dallas Express that the impact is particularly intense in rental markets where lower-income residents are concentrated.
“Of course, the impact is much more pronounced in Dallas where at least 1 in five residents is an immigrant (legal or illegal) compared to Pittsburgh where one out of every 23 residents is an immigrant,” Camarota said.
Camarota testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in September 2024, stating, “Census Bureau data shows that since January of 2021, the number of immigrant-headed households is up 2.4 million, with perhaps 1.4 million of this increase due to illegal immigration.”
According to his analysis, much of this growth has intensified pressure on rental markets.
Dallas housing prices have spiked dramatically over the last decade. A 2024 post on the MetroTex Association of Realtors blog was headlined, “Dallas Home Prices Skyrocketed 142% in 10 Years.”
Rental costs have also climbed steeply.
In January 2020, D Magazine reported that the average Dallas apartment rented for $773 per month in 2010 and had risen to $1,240 by the end of 2019, a 60% increase. During the same period, median household income reportedly rose just 32%.
The burden of these rising costs is increasingly falling on lower- and middle-income families. A 2024 report from the Child Poverty Action Lab found that nearly half of Dallas residents spent more than 30% of their income on housing—an amount considered cost-burdened by federal guidelines. The report noted that senior renters and single parents were among the hardest hit.
Camarota’s testimony emphasized that recent immigrants disproportionately rent rather than own housing, further tightening the rental market. “Of households headed by an immigrant who arrived between January 2022 to August 2024, 89.5 percent responded they were renters,” he said.
Research has long supported the connection between immigration and housing affordability. In a 2007 study, economist Albert Saiz found that a 1% increase in a city’s population due to immigration was associated with a 1% rise in both average rents and housing values. Recent analysis from Camarota suggests the impact could be even more pronounced in certain areas.
“My own analysis indicates that a 5-percentage point increase in the recent immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12 percent increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent, relative to their income,” Camarota testified. He noted that more research is needed to fully confirm the correlation, but said the data is “certainly consistent with the possibility that immigration, including illegal immigration, has significantly increased housing prices in areas of heavy immigrant settlement.”
The demand surge in Texas has coincided with massive population growth.
In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that nearly 2 million illegal aliens (excluding their children) lived in Texas. Since then, the numbers have only increased. Camarota testified that from January 2021 to August 2024, the total foreign-born population in the United States grew by 6.6 million, with an estimated 60% of that growth attributed to illegal immigration.
While Texas has long attracted newcomers from other states, foreign immigration now plays an outsized role in shaping the housing market. Camarota’s data suggests that immigration does not affect all Americans equally. “In general, we think the impact is more pronounced in the rental market where the less-educated lower income are concentrated,” he said to DX.
The effects also ripple beyond rent.
Camarota told DX that immigration-driven housing inflation may be affecting family formation. “Immigration does seem to reduce the fertility of the U.S., very likely by increasing housing costs for young families,” he told the outlet, citing figures from a 2023 report on immigrant and native fertility rates.
He also directed DX to a recent study that gave another explanation for the decrease in native fertility that seems to co-occur with increased immigration: ” It may be due to homophily, the statistical tendency for similar people to associate with each other, in that diversity can make finding a same-ethnicity marriage partner more difficult.”
It is obvious that domestic migration—Americans moving from other states to Texas—also contributes to rising prices. However, Americans have a constitutional right to live and move freely within the United States. Foreign nationals, including legal and illegal immigrants, do not. DX reported that U-Haul had a shortage of trucks as so many Californians moved to Texas in 2022.
Likewise, there has been some pressure from the institutional purchase of homes. 43% of single-family homes in Dallas and 28% statewide of single-family homes were reportedly purchased by institutional buyers, such as investors, in 2021.
Camarota also noted that not everything associated with illegal/legal immigration is bad. While illegal and legal immigration can drive down native wages, it also supplies employers with a larger and cheaper labor pool. Likewise, while it drives down wages, it can drive up rent prices, which is good for landlords.
Camarota’s data-backed testimony underscores the need for further study.
“Adding very large numbers of people to the country must significantly impact housing prices by driving-up demand for rental properties,” he told lawmakers. “This is especially true because the increase is concentrated in only parts of the country.”
Camarota’s bio on the Center for Immigration Studies website says, “Dr. Camarota received a master’s degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and later earned a doctorate degree from the University of Virginia in public policy analysis.”