> The issue is that the person to whom I responded was trying to imply that the number of illegal border crossings being larger than the number of new housing units is somehow a gotcha. It's not.
It's not a "gotcha" - it's a significant amount of additional demand, which, given how supply and demand work, drives up prices.
> You fail basic common sense, too. Does every household have one person?
How many people per household affects the degree of the problem, but it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. If you have 2.7m people coming in and you assume that for this population you average five people to a household, that's still roughly 1/3 of the new housing units being generated that are needed to house them. That's an enormous increase in demand, which pushes housing costs up.
To be clear, I think this is a problem of too little housing supply more than too much immigration (though I do oppose illegal immigration and have a strong preference for it ceasing entirely), but either way the problems suggested by the post that you're replying to are very clearly real.
