As the nation’s largest city struggles with an affordable housing crisis, a new analysis reveals that illegal migrants occupy about 600,000 rental units across the five boroughs, ramping up competition for resources and driving up costs for American citizens.
The revelation comes as federal estimates place the total illegal migrant population in New York State at 670,000 as of early this year, with the vast majority concentrated in NYC.
Given that nearly all illegal migrants rent – experts calculate that upwards of 90% of these residents, or about 600,000 people, are housed in the city’s rental market.
This figure represents a significant portion of NYC’s 2.3 million renter-occupied units, where demand already outpaces supply by hundreds of thousands each year.
According to the Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS) from 2023:
About 38-40% of residents in rental properties were born outside the U.S., affecting nearly 930,000 units
44% are foreign-born, impacting about 410,000 of the nearly 1 million stabilized apartments citywide.
These shares include both legal and illegal migrants who make up about 40% of NYC’s total foreign-born population of 3 million.
This data suggests that about 230,000 illegal migrants alone are in stabilized or public units, which are units originally meant to help low-income citizens.
Vice President JD Vance has been vocal about this national crisis, warning that the influx of 30 million illegal immigrants under the Biden administration flooded housing markets and has “taken houses that should go to American citizens.”
In recent interviews, Vance linked this “flood” directly to unaffordable rents and home prices, arguing that deportations and border security are crucial to lowering prices.
For NYC, critics say the city’s $5 billion tab for migrant shelters alone in recent years could have funded thousands of new affordable units for veterans, families, and working-class locals.
