For a few years now the country has been dealing with skyrocketing housing prices that were driven by a variety of factors. A large factor is that the supply of housing never actually caught back up after the Great Recession. Combined with increased demand during and after the pandemic, along with interest rates that were sent up because of inflation, pushed housing costs beyond what many are able to afford.
In the current election cycle, both candidates have (sort of) put forward policies to address the price of housing. Vice President Harris wants to incentivize the building of more housing as well as provide inducements for first time home buyers to help with costs. Former President Trump wants to deport millions of illegal immigrants because he blames housing prices on the immigrants “invading” our borders. It seems plainly obvious to me that the Vice President’s plan is much closer to actually addressing the problem of housing costs. Supply has simply not kept up with demand in any meaningful way.
Given how close the polls are, I want to stop and think about what if Trump wins. Undoubtedly, many of his supporters believe his rhetoric about illegal immigrants causing housing inflation, and even those who don’t agree, but vote for him still probably don’t have a problem with that rhetoric. If Trump wins, without any movement to actually build more housing, I’m inclined to think that people don’t actually want more housing built. There are perhaps more people that are NIMBYs (not in my backyard) than YIMBYs (Yes in my backyard) people. Perhaps, what people actually want isn’t to address problems in the country, but rather to have a scapegoat to blame the ills of the country on and take it out on said scapegoat. In this case the scapegoat being undocumented migrants coming across the southern border. Illegal immigration (and “bad” trade deals) really have become the blame for anything and everything that has gone wrong in this country. If we simply get rid of illegal immigrants and set tariffs across the board at 10-20%, then Trump will have made America great again.
Now none of this is actually true. Illegal immigrants have not caused the inflation in housing prices or in general. Illegal immigrants have not caused massive crime waves. In fact, undocumented migrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, regardless of anecdotes people have. But we increasingly live in a society where evidence and facts don’t matter. What matters whatever our tribe says against them. Throughout history the scapegoat mechanism has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Rene Girard laid out a theory of the scapegoat and his theory of mimetic desire. He actually had a quite original atonement theory in Christianity where Jesus is the final scapegoat. The Jewish leaders blamed him for all their problems as did the Romans in that region. Christians should know better, and yet too often we don’t.
If our country really is in the place where so many of our fellow citizens would rather scapegoat an entire people rather than deal with facts and evidence to actually address the real situation, then we are not in a good place as a society and I fear where that will lead us. Hopefully November 5 doesn’t turn out that way.
