Candidates for the position of vice president highlighted their housing goals in the VP debate on Tuesday night, one month from the election day. JD Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, and Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, revealed how their parties will solve the housing crisis.
After several house calls from both candidates in the first hour of the debate, CBS News moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan actually threw a question dedicated specifically to housing issues.
In the weeks since being nominated as the running mate of Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, both VP candidates have spoken about the need to address the housing crisis.
Vance has criticized the presence of institutional investors in housing, immigration and “arrogant” schemes. US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), while Walz represents the housing policies announced by Harris and the history of implementing housing policy as the governor of his state.
But Vance and Walz each came to their housing ideas from very different perspectives and were on full display during the debate.
Walz: Housing is the path to middle class stability
“There is a shortage of more than four million homes in the United States, and that is contributing to high home prices,” Brennan began. He first turned to Walz, asking where President Harris would build the 3 million new homes he promised in his sweeping housing plan.
“The problem we’ve had is that we have a lot of people who see houses as another asset,” said Walz. “It can be bought up, it can be moved, it can be moved. They are not the people who live in those houses.”
Walz talked about the $3 billion housing initiative he signed into law as governor, which he called “the biggest investment we’ve ever made in housing” and said it helped “cut red tape” in the state’s housing programs. But Walz also said there’s only so much that can be done about housing at the federal level.
“Local people make it easy to build those houses,” he said. Regarding the vice president’s down payment assistance program, Walz compared it to a veteran’s home loan, saying another benefit veterans have is that they “don’t have to pay a down payment. You will pay it, and you will pay your mortgage. Those are the things that we know over time, the value that is appreciated, the wealth that is produced and created by it.”
Walz went on to say that Minneapolis has benefited from lower incomes and a 12% increase in housing, “because we’re stripping some of these things away, and we’re using a state program to make sure we’re providing some of that down payment assistance.” “
Walz added that stable housing is a pathway to stable jobs, and a safe home life for children, which saves taxpayers money in the long run. He also took a shot at some of the positions Vance mentioned related to immigration and housing.
“We can’t blame the immigrants,” said Walz. “The truth is that we don’t have enough affordable houses naturally, but we can make sure that the government is there to help start it. [and] create that foundation.”
Vance: immigration raises housing costs, energy system can help
The moderators then directed the question at Vance, saying that President Trump’s housing proposals are focused on taking federal land to build homes, deregulate, provide tax breaks and stop illegal border crossings.
When asked about the immediate impact on housing affordability these proposals would have, Vance began by expressing some agreement with Walz.
“We don’t want to blame immigrants for rising housing prices, but we want to blame Kamala Harris for bringing millions of illegal aliens into the country, which increases costs,” said Vance. “The 25 million foreigners competing with Americans for the housing shortage is one of the factors driving the country’s housing prices. That’s why we have a huge increase in housing prices that has happened at the same time as a huge increase in illegal immigration under the leadership of Kamala Harris.”
Vance also said some of Walz’s proposed housing ideas were “not good at all,” but said the vice president had an opportunity to implement some of the policy proposals he made during the Biden-Harris administration.
“If he wants to do all these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite him to use the office that the American people have already given him, not to sit around and do nothing while the American people find the American dream of owning a home completely unattainable,” Vance said.
Vance also said the Trump campaign’s energy plan would make housing more affordable.
“One of the things that causes the cost of housing, apart from illegal immigration [energy],” Vance said. “Think about this: if a truck driver pays 40% more for diesel than for the lumber he brings to the construction site, the house will also be more expensive. If we open the power of America, you will receive immediate assistance for the release of the values of American citizens, not – by the way – only in housing, but also in all other economic assets, too. “
Vance came in 23 seconds into the answer, and when given the chance to add more he expanded on Trump’s global proposal.
“What Donald Trump is saying is, we have a lot of federal land that’s not being used for anything,” he said. “They are not used for nature reserves, and they can be areas where we build more houses. And I think we should open construction in this country. We have a lot of land that can be used.
“We have a lot of Americans who need homes,” Vance continued. “We must deport illegal immigrants who compete for those homes, and we must build more housing for American citizens who deserve to be here.”
The final confrontation
In the final moments of the housing phase, Walz criticized Vance’s description of illegal border crossings in the Biden-Harris era, but also said the federal zone proposal comes with caveats.
“Are we going to drill and build houses in the same federal area?” Walz asked. “When people hear about government lands, these are important pieces of land,” he said, saying that as a conservationist he would be concerned about policy that might be directed at them.
“But again, that’s when you look at houses, and you look at these things as assets, like there’s an opportunity to make money here,” Walz said. “I think there are better ways to do this. We saw it in Minnesota. We are able to fix some of these houses, and we were also able to invest.”
Vance said the study was conducted by The Federal Reserve helps bolster the Trump campaign’s claims about immigration driving up housing. Journalists e New York Times he said during the debate it wasn’t clear what study Vance was talking about, but Vance said the campaign would share the books on social media afterward.
But Vance ended the House portion of the debate criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s regulatory framework, saying Harris has helped lead an administration that “makes it hard to develop our resources, makes it hard to build things, and wants to throw people in jail for not doing everything like Kamala Harris says they should.” [them],” Vance said. “And that means you have a lot of people who would like to build homes, who can’t build homes.”
The housing portion of the debate concluded with Vance repeating the belief that immigration continues to drive up housing costs.
“I actually agree with Tim Walz,” he said. “We have to get out of this idea of housing as a commodity. But the thing that has really turned houses into property is giving millions upon millions of people who have no legal right to be here.”
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