How Population Strain Broke American Housing

Everyone agrees there's a housing crisis. Rents are unaffordable. Home prices are out of reach. Young Americans can't start families because they can't afford a place to live. But when it comes to explaining why, the conversation stops short of the most obvious factor: we've added tens of millions of people to our cities in just three decades.

The numbers don't lie. And they tell a story that policymakers refuse to acknowledge.

The Big Picture: 32 Million People in 35 Years

Before diving into specific cities, let's look at what happened nationally since the Immigration Act of 1990 took effect.

The Foreign-Born Population Explosion

From 1990 to 2025, America added approximately 32 million foreign-born residents — more than the population of Texas. The foreign-born share of the population has doubled from 7.9% to over 15%.

But that's only half the story. Add in their U.S.-born children — 20 million adults and 16 million minors — and America's "immigrant stock" (first and second generation combined) now exceeds 87 million people, roughly 26% of the total U.S. population. By 2050, this figure is projected to reach 160 million.

This didn't happen gradually over centuries. It happened in just 35 years — a single generation.

The National Housing Impact

In 1990, the national home price-to-income ratio was 3.2x. A median household earning $35,000 could reasonably afford a median home priced around $112,000. This was considered normal. This was achievable. This was the American Dream.

By 2024, that ratio has climbed to 5.0x — and that's the national average. In many cities, it's far worse.

The results speak for themselves:

• Home price-to-income ratio: +60% since 1990
• Median rent: +169% (from $600 to $1,837/month)
• Median income growth: +45% (inflation-adjusted since 1967)
• Home price growth: +104% (same period)

Housing costs have grown at more than double the rate of incomes. Supply simply cannot keep up with demand when you're adding millions of new residents every year.

The Tale of Two Americas: High vs. Low Immigration Cities

Here's what the media won't tell you: the housing crisis is not uniform across America. It's concentrated in cities with the highest immigration — while cities with lower immigration remain affordable.

Top 20 Metro Areas: Highest Foreign-Born Population

*Metro areas with 500K+ population, ranked by foreign-born percentage*

Average foreign-born: 22.4% | Average price-to-income: 7.0x

*Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023; Census Population Estimates 2024; Demographia 2024*

Top 20 Metro Areas: Lowest Foreign-Born Population

*Metro areas with 500K+ population, ranked by foreign-born percentage (ascending)*

Average foreign-born: 5.7% | Average price-to-income: 3.2x

*Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023; Census Population Estimates 2024; Demographia 2024*

The Pattern Is Unmistakable

Metro areas with foreign-born populations above 15% have price-to-income ratios of 5-12x. Metro areas with foreign-born populations under 10% have ratios of 2-4x — comparable to the national average in the 1980s.

Pittsburgh has been rated the most affordable major housing market in America for five consecutive years. Its metro area foreign-born population? Just 4%. The Detroit metro, with under 9% foreign-born, has a price-to-income ratio of just 3.1x.

Meanwhile, in Miami — where over 41% of metro residents are foreign-born — that same family would need nearly nine years of income to buy a median home.

Pre-1990: A Different America

Before the Immigration Act of 1990, American cities were growing — but at a sustainable pace. The 1924 Immigration Act had kept immigration levels remarkably low for four decades, allowing housing supply to keep pace with demand and wages to rise.

The 1965 Hart-Celler Act did reopen the door to immigration by abolishing the national origins quota system. Annual legal immigration increased from roughly 250,000 in the early 1960s to about 450,000 by the late 1970s — a significant increase, but still manageable. The foreign-born population grew from 9.6 million in 1970 to 14.1 million in 1980 and 19.8 million by 1990.

But it was the Immigration Act of 1990 that truly broke the dam. That law nearly doubled legal immigration levels to over 700,000 per year, created new visa categories, and set the stage for the unprecedented mass migration we see today.

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s:

• A single income could support a family and a mortgage
• The price-to-income ratio hovered around 2.5-3.5x nationally
• Young couples could afford homes in their twenties
• Renting was a temporary step, not a permanent sentence

The foreign-born population in 1970 was just 4.7% — less than one-third of today's level. Housing was affordable because population growth was manageable.

The Supply Argument Falls Short

Some argue that we simply need to build more housing. While construction is important, the numbers reveal the futility of trying to out-build mass immigration:

• America adds approximately 1.2 million legal immigrants per year
• Another estimated 2-3 million enter illegally in recent years
• Total new housing units built annually: approximately 1.4 million

We're not even building enough housing to accommodate new arrivals, let alone address the existing shortage or provide for natural population growth. It's a treadmill we can never escape as long as immigration remains at current levels.

Research from MIT economist Albert Saiz found that an inflow of immigrants equal to just 1% of a city's population causes rents and housing values to increase by approximately 1%. When cities like Miami and Los Angeles have seen their populations transformed by 30-50% foreign-born residents over three decades, the cumulative impact on housing costs is enormous.

What Real Reform Looks Like

The solution isn't complicated — it's just politically difficult:

1. Reduce immigration to sustainable levels — Cut legal immigration by at least 80%, from over 1 million to approximately 200,000 annually. This was the level maintained from the 1920s through the 1960s — a period of unprecedented middle-class prosperity and affordable housing.

1. Enforce existing immigration law — End the flow of 2-3 million illegal border crossers annually. Every person who enters illegally competes for housing with American citizens and legal residents.

1. Allow supply to catch up with demand — With reduced immigration, housing construction can finally address the existing shortage. Markets can stabilize. Young Americans can afford homes again.

The Path Forward

The housing crisis will not solve itself. No amount of subsidies, tax credits, or density bonuses will overcome the fundamental problem of too many people competing for too few homes.

America maintained affordable housing for generations under restrictive immigration policies. We can do so again — but only if we're willing to acknowledge what changed.

The correlation between mass immigration and housing unaffordability isn't a coincidence. It's cause and effect. And until we address the cause, Americans will continue to be priced out of their own cities.

The evidence is clear: cities with low immigration have affordable housing. Cities with high immigration don't. The choice is ours.

Sources

Immigration Statistics

• U.S. Census Bureau: Foreign-Born Population — Official decennial census and ACS data on foreign-born population (1970-2023)

• Migration Policy Institute: U.S. Immigrant Population Over Time — Historical immigration trends and analysis

• Center for Immigration Studies: Foreign-Born Population Report — 2025 estimates based on Census CPS data

• DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics — Official legal permanent resident (green card) data by year

• Pew Research Center: Second-Generation Americans — Data on U.S.-born children of immigrants and population projections

Housing Data

• Harvard JCHS: Home Price-to-Income Ratio — Analysis of national housing affordability trends

• Visual Capitalist: Home Price-to-Income by City — City-level price-to-income ratio mapping

• Demographia International Housing Affordability — Annual survey of housing affordability in major markets (2024)

• Construction Coverage: Cities With Highest Price-to-Income Ratios — 2025 city rankings

City-Specific Data

• Data USA: City Profiles — Foreign-born population percentages by city (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, etc.)

• Census Reporter: City Demographics — Detailed demographic profiles for all U.S. cities

• USAFacts: Immigrant Communities — Geographic distribution of immigrant populations

Economic Research

• Saiz, Albert. "Immigration and housing rents in American cities." *Journal of Urban Economics* 61.2 (2007): 345-371 — Foundational research on immigration's impact on housing costs

• Brookings Institution: Population Growth in Metro America — Analysis of metropolitan population trends since 1980

Image Credit

• Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash