Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) is promising “emergency housing” for migrants bused from Texas even as rents in Chicago have skyrocketed for residents.
Last week, Texas governor Greg Abbott (R) started busing border crossers to the sanctuary city of Chicago after sending thousands over the last few months to the sanctuary cities of Washington, DC and New York City.
In response, Pritzker is promising migrants “emergency housing” as well as “health care screenings, the offer of COVID-19 vaccines and … additional legal resettlement assistance.”
Meanwhile, as Breitbart News has reported, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has called Abbott’s sending of the migrant buses “racist and xenophobic” along with “immoral” and “unpatriotic.”
Pritzker’s pledge of emergency housing for migrants comes as Chicagoans face sky-high rents and housing costs. The most recent analysis shows that Chicagoans are paying about 20 percent more on rent this year compared to last year.
Today, the average rent in Chicago is more than $2,900, which is nearly 20 percent higher than the cost of rent at the same time last year. Rents in Chicago have increased so much that tenants are forming unions to fight their landlords and the city.
Real estate investors are some of the biggest beneficiaries of mass immigration to the United States. Immigration-driven population growth, set to bring the United States population to more than 400 million by 2060, is likely to send housing prices even higher.
A 2017 study published in the Journal of Housing Economics found that “increases in immigration into a metropolitan statistical area are linked with rising rents and home prices in that metropolitan statistical area and neighboring metropolitan statistical areas.”
As legal immigration brings over a million legal immigrants to the United States annually, as well as more than a million more on temporary work visas, President Joe Biden’s administration has also implemented an expansive Catch and Release network where every month thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens are sent all over the nation to await court hearings.
In the meantime, those new arrivals need housing.
While it is unclear exactly where border crossers and illegal aliens are resettling, the administration’s Alternative to Detention (ATD) program gives insight into the level of mass immigration into each city coinciding with record-high housing costs.
In August, the Biden administration had more than 13,000 border crossers and illegal aliens in Chicago on the ATD program. In November 2020 fewer than 6,600 border crossers and illegal aliens had been sent to Chicago on the ATD program.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.