President Donald Trump’s deportation intentions could jeopardize Gov. Spencer Cox’s objective of building 35,000 starter houses by 2028. It all boils down to the available work force.
According to Department of Workforce Services projections for 2023, Utah has approximately 135,000 construction workers. An estimated 12,000 of them are in the nation illegally. This is according to a study undertaken by the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, which examined census statistics on population and wealth. Without such people, construction costs may rise, making starter houses more difficult to create.
The Trump administration’s recent measures may make it simpler to deport those who are in the country illegally without a criminal conviction. For instance, “collateral arrests” are now legal, according to the Associated Press. This means that immigration enforcement officers can arrest persons without legal status who they come across while searching for specific targets.
The Laken Riley Act, signed by the president on January 29, asks for the detention and deportation of those without legal status who are charged — but not convicted — of certain crimes, including nonviolent offenses such as shoplifting or minor larceny.
According to Steve Waldrip, the governor’s senior advisor for housing strategy and innovation, removing Utah’s undocumented construction workers would reduce the workforce.
“I do think that there’s a concern that if we lose that segment of our labor force in housing construction, that we will feel that in the pricing that’s already too high,” he went on.
A recent study by economists Troup Howard of the University of Utah, Mengqi Wang of Amherst College, and Dayin Zhang of the University of Wisconsin-Madison indicated that deporting workers without legal status raises property prices. The paper is now being peer reviewed.
The researchers examined changes in residential building as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Secure Communities program expanded across the country from 2008 to 2013. Under the program, the Federal Bureau of Investigation automatically provided fingerprints of people arrested in state and local jurisdictions with the Department of Homeland Security. The fingerprints were checked against immigration databases, and if an individual was found to be in the country unlawfully, ICE took action.
Zhang explained that they compared houses in counties where the program had been implemented at various dates.
“We found first, if you have Secure Communities, you see a shortage of supply, shortage of labor supply in the construction sector, specifically from illegal immigrants,” he told me.
This resulted in fewer building, a housing shortage, and an increase in new construction costs. Builders occasionally built smaller homes to compensate for increased costs. Zhang added that the impact could vary depending on how much of a region’s labor is in the nation illegally.
The study discovered that large-scale deportations resulted in fewer jobs for US-born workers. According to Zhang, construction wages have not improved significantly, and many low-skilled jobs remain unfilled. As a result, there were less opportunities for highly skilled professionals.
“If you just don’t have people framing the house or install[ing] the drywall, you actually don’t have the job for inspectors or electricians,” he told me.
Waldrip said escalating expenses could make the governor’s starter house goal even more difficult to meet.
“Pricing is a part of the starter home,” he told me. “If we get too high, then it’s no longer a starter home.”
