Vance and Walz spar over housing in VP debate

The vice presidential candidates highlighted their housing policies Tuesday night during the VP debate, a month after Election Day. JD Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, and Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, outlined how their parties would tackle the housing crisis.

After several home mentions from both candidates in the first hour of the debate, CBS News Moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan even asked a specific question about housing issues.

In the weeks since they were selected as respective running mates of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, both VP candidates have spoken about the need to address housing issues.

Vance has previously railed against the presence of institutional investors in housing, immigration and “bloated” programs U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), while Walz has championed the housing policies announced by Harris, in addition to a record of implementing housing policies as governor of his state.

But Vance and Walz each come to their housing perspectives from very different ideologies, and they were in full view during the debate.

Walz: Housing is a 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 housing prices,” Brennan began. Turning first to Walz, she asked where President Harris would build the 3 million new homes she promised in her sweeping housing plan.

“The problem we’ve had is we have a lot of people who see housing as another asset,” Walz said. “It can be bought, it can be moved, it can be moved. Those are not people living in those houses.”

Walz pointed to the $3 billion housing plan he signed into law as governor, calling it the “largest investment we had ever made in housing” and saying it helped “reduce the red tape” for state housing programs . But Walz also said there is only so much that can be done on housing at the federal level.

“Local people make it easier to build those houses,” he said. Regarding the vice president’s down payment assistance plan, Walz drew comparisons to a veteran’s home loan, saying veterans have an advantage in that they “don’t have to pay the down payment. You’re going to pay it back, and you’re going to pay your mortgage. Those are things we know in the long term: the appreciated value, the generational wealth that comes from that.”

Walz went on to say that Minneapolis has benefited from low inflation and a 12% increase in housing inventory, “because we are taking some of these things away and implementing a state program to make sure that we provide some of that down payment assistance. ”

Walz added that stable housing is a path to stable jobs and a safer home life for children, which saves taxpayers money in the long run. He also took a stab at some of Vance’s positions on immigration and housing.

“We can’t blame immigrants,” Walz said. “The fact is we don’t have enough naturally affordable housing, but we can ensure the government is there to help get this going. [and] create that foundation.”

Vance: Immigration increases housing costs, energy plan can help

The moderators then turned the question to Vance, saying that President Trump’s housing proposals primarily focus on seizing federal lands to build homes, eliminating regulations, providing tax breaks and curbing 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 higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting millions of illegal aliens into this country, which drives up costs,” Vance said. “25 million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce housing are one of the biggest drivers of home prices in the country. That is why we have massive increases in housing prices, accompanied by massive increases in illegal alien populations led by Kamala Harris.”

Vance also said some of Walz’s housing ideas were “halfway decent,” but said the vice president has had a chance to implement some of the policy proposals she made during the Biden-Harris term.

“If she wants to implement all these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite her to use the office the American people have already given her, and not sit around and campaign and do nothing while Americans find the dream of home ownership completely unaffordable. Vance said.

Vance also said the Trump campaign’s energy plan would serve to make housing more affordable.

“One of the biggest drivers of housing costs, other than illegal immigration, is [energy]” said Vance. “Think about it: if a truck driver pays 40% more for diesel than the wood he delivers to the construction site, the house also becomes a lot more expensive. If we open up American energy, you will get an immediate release of prices for American citizens, not – by the way – just for housing, but also for a whole range of other economic goods.”

Vance came in 23 seconds off the time with this answer, and when given the opportunity to add more, he expanded on Trump’s federal lands proposal.

“What Donald Trump has said is that we have a lot of federal lands that are not being used for anything,” he said. “They are not used for national parks, and they could be places where we build a lot of housing. And I think we need to open up 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 should kick out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes, and we should build more homes for the American citizens who deserve to be here.”

Final collision

In the final moments of the housing segment, Walz criticized Vance’s characterization of illegal border crossings during the Biden-Harris era, but also said the federal land proposal comes with caveats.

“Are we going to drill and build houses on the same federal land?” Walz asked. “When people hear federal lands, these are really important pieces of land,” he says that as a national park enthusiast, he would be concerned about a policy that could target them.

“But again, this is when you look at housing, and you look at these things as a commodity, like there’s an opportunity here to make money,” Walz said. “I think there are better ways to do this. We’ve seen it in Minnesota. We have been able to renovate some of these houses and make some investments.”

Vance stated that from an investigation of the Federal Reserve helps confirm the Trump campaign’s claims that immigration is driving up the housing market. Reporters at New York Times said that during the debate it was not immediately clear which study Vance was referring to, but Vance stated that the campaign would share the literature on social media afterward.

But Vance ended the housing portion of the debate in which he criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s regulatory structure, saying Harris has helped lead an administration “that makes it harder to develop our resources, makes it harder to build things and throw people away’. in jail for not doing everything exactly as Kamala Harris tells them to do [them]” said Vance. “And that means there are a lot of people who would like to build houses, but who can’t.”

The housing portion of the debate ended with Vance reiterating the belief that immigration continues to drive up housing costs.

“I actually agree with Tim Walz,” he said. “We need to get rid of the idea of ​​housing as a commodity. But what has most commodified housing is giving it away to millions of people who have no legal right to be here.”