Caught in the Housing Bubble: Immigrants’ Housing Outcomes in Traditional Gateways and Newly Emerging Destinations

Abstract

Research has documented that immigrants have moved in large numbers to almost every metropolitan area and select rural areas in the US. In the midst of these demographic shifts, the country has experienced a profound recession. To date, there has been little research on the impact of the recession on immigrants across the US. Using 2006 and 2009 American Community Survey microdata, the paper assesses how the recent economic crisis has affected Latino and Asian immigrants with respect to two housing outcomes (homeownership and headship) over two important time points in the recent economic cycle. Immigrants have worse housing outcomes and significantly lower mobility rates after the recession. Regression results suggest that the negative impacts from the recession are strongest in the gateway metropolitan areas and that, after controlling for residence in the hardest-hit areas, increases in metropolitan-level unemployment and mortgage delinquency rates have a negative impact on homeownership rates. The results also suggest that, even though the recession has disrupted immigrants' upward trajectory in the housing markets, the effect has not been as severe on immigrants as one might expect. In particular, the places where immigrant populations are newest have not experienced as large a reduction in homeownership as those in the large immigrant gateways. Even in the established gateways, the decline in homeownership has been smaller for immigrants than for US-born households.