Americans no longer value the dream of homeownership, with the number of new households and rate of homeownership declining since the financial crisis. But according to an article in The Atlantic, there is still one group that cherishes the dream: Immigrants.
“They view homeownership as a piece of the rock. It's a benchmark of being settled,” says Dowell Myers, a professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC. “They view homeownership as the American Dream and they buy into that.”
During the past two decades, immigrants have accounted for 27.5% of all household growth, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies that’s cited in the article. Last year, immigrant households made up 11.2% of owner-occupied housing according to the JCHS—that’s up from only 6.8% in 1994.
And the growth is expected to continue.
According to data from Pew Research, about 61% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been here for 10 years or more. President Obama’s proposed immigration actions, which could provide new legal rights for many undocumented immigrants in the U.S., might have a major impact on the market for homeownership, allowing immigrants who have been in the country for an extended period to purchase a home, without fear of deportation or legal action.
