During an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg responded to data that home prices in the city jumped at the same time as a spike in immigration under the Biden administration by stating that “the idea that migration has caused a spike in housing prices is absolutely absurd.” And that the spike in housing prices is due to supply issues and “because people are coming to our city from California, from Illinois, from Texas itself.”
Co-host Matt Miller asked, “I want to ask about housing prices. I was looking at the Freddie Mac house price index for San Antonio. And, indeed, you see a spike in home prices right as soon as you see a spike in immigration at the start of the Biden administration. The two seemed very correlated. How are you doing at keeping housing affordable for your residents?”
Nirenberg responded, “I’m not going to slip into that kind of correlation equals causation, the idea that migration has caused the spike in housing prices is absolutely absurd. What we’ve seen is a tightening of the supply chains, we’ve seen a tightening of the labor markets, this is a worldwide phenomenon. But we also know that housing prices are going up because people are coming to our city from California, from Illinois, from Texas itself. We’re a great city to live in, and that’s made us very desirable. We’ve had a strategic housing implementation plan in place that we’ve been implementing to make sure that the housing market is stable and it’s healthy. Of course, housing costs have gone up roughly 25% over the last four or five years, but, relative to some of our peer cities, we’re doing a good job in making sure that there’s a healthy supply to the demand in housing.”
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