“Build that wall, build that wall,” cheered a sea of adoring fans, their faces bright red with excitement. “We’re going to build a wall. It will be a real wall,” proclaimed the soon-to-be president of the United States. “It’s going to happen!”
The border wall is perhaps the most notorious electoral promise of the modern era, a symbol of the politics of racial division made corporeal. Throughout his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised to build a concrete wall along all 2,000 miles of the southern U.S. border. Crucially, the self-proclaimed “deal-maker” said that Mexico would be picking up the check for the entirety of the project.
Nearly a decade after Trump descended a golden escalator spouting vitriol about immigrants, there is conspicuously not a 2,000-mile-long concrete wall along the border, nor did Mexico foot the bill for the estimated $15 billion Trump spent trying to make it happen.
Now, the former president is back with a new set of fantastical infrastructure policies — this time on housing.
Housing has surged as a top national electoral issue this year. Nearly a third of people surveyed by the real estate brokerage Redfin said that housing affordability was a top issue during this election. Another survey from Popular Democracy in Action found that housing was a top issue for swing-state voters this cycle, with many supporting policy initiatives like rent stabilization. There’s good reason for that. A Harvard University report in May found that roughly 22.4 million households in the United States pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. Home prices have reportedly risen 47 percent higher than they were in 2020.
“Agenda47,” Trump’s policy platform, calls for a radical reimagining of our housing system, starting with constructing new “freedom cities” on vacant federal land, where residents will travel around in flying cars. The absurdity of that plan is rivaled only by the cruelty of two other central planks: the forced relocation of unhoused people to “tent cities,” and the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.
Housing experts say that Trump’s plans are thin on details, detached from reality, and, in at least some cases, extend far beyond the powers of the presidency. That’s not to say, however, that he wouldn’t attempt to follow his rhetoric up with actions, especially when it comes to mass deportations. But as with his border wall, the outcome is in many ways besides the point. The proposals are just as much, if not more, about reinforcing who does and doesn’t belong in Trump’s America than tackling this country’s worsening housing crisis.
For DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director at Popular Democracy In Action, Trump’s aims are blatantly obvious. The former president is “using these policies to create a wedge between who is and who is not: … who gets to be treated like a human [and] who gets to be treated like they deserve the protection of the state.”
Futuristic Cities for the Rich
In March 2023, Trump unveiled his “Freedom Cities” proposal, which would open up “vacant” federal land for developers to bid on and eventually build futuristic “Freedom Cities,” with Jetsons-style flying cars as a primary mode of transportation.
Tyler Haupert, an assistant professor of urban studies at NYU Shanghai, and other housing experts noted that the plan was likely modeled after Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project. The $1.5 trillion planned futuristic city in the desert was the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, a close ally of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and has been beset by delays since its launch in 2017.
“What’s happening in Saudi Arabia is incredibly expensive, and already going over budget and delayed, running into all sorts of problems, also exploiting extremely cheap labor,” said Haupert. “So I think that using that as a model is not so realistic or desirable.”
There are other reasons the project is not realistic. The majority of the country’s “vacant” land is located in the western part of the United States, often with no access to basic infrastructure. “Our federal lands are located in places that are vacant, not just because they’re federal lands, but they’re places that lack water, that lack connection to transportation networks, that are on protected lands,” said Haupert.
Even where Trump has made practical proposals to address the country’s housing shortage, such as changing local zoning regulations to encourage further development, such actions are not really within the scope of the presidency, housing experts told The Intercept.
“The federal government doesn’t really have too much power to make decisions on where to build, what to build; it’s also heavily influenced by the state and local-level zoning and land-use regulations,” said Jung Hyun Choi, principal research associate at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “That’s maybe one of the reasons that the Trump campaign wants to come out with bold ideas to shift attention from the kind of lack of power to actually implement.”
Casey J. Dawkins, a professor of urban studies at the University of Maryland, agreed that Trump would be hamstrung by the federal government’s “limited ability to influence local land use regulations.”
Dawkins added that lowering mortgage rates, another Trump promise, would be largely outside of his purview. Interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, and though the president appoints the central bank’s chair, it operates as an independent body. “Obviously, reducing mortgage rates would be a great thing,” Dawkins said, “but the president’s ability to influence that is pretty limited.”
Criminalizing Homelessness
On the campaign trail, Trump has also vowed to develop “tent cities,” where unhoused people would be relocated or face arrest for “camping.” In a video debuting the policy, Trump claimed that it would rid “the scourge of homelessness, the drug addicted, and the dangerously deranged,” on top of solving veteran homelessness.
In the past three years, reporting has revealed that conservative groups like the Cicero Institute have been at the forefront of pushing for camping bans in various cities and localities across the United States. This year, three states have passed laws prohibiting public camping, essentially criminalizing homelessness. In a recent ruling, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court upheld the ability of cities to arrest and fine individuals for sleeping outside, regardless of their circumstances.
Experts in housing have emphasized that setting up tent cities is not a viable solution to homelessness and could potentially worsen the issue. They argue that investing in permanent affordable housing units with on-site social services is a more effective approach. The push for tent cities reflects a longstanding history of residential segregation in the country, according to Tony Samara of Right to the City Action.
While the talk of freedom and tent cities from former President Trump may be more rhetoric than action, his threats of mass deportation are concerning. If reelected, Trump could have more authority over immigration, especially if Republicans gain control of Congress. Trump has alluded to using the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, a move that experts warn would not address housing accessibility or affordability.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development during his first term, along with initiatives like Project 2025, have raised doubts about his commitment to solving the housing crisis. These actions, including weakening the Fair Housing Act, have been criticized for favoring his allies over regular working people. The rollback of regulations aimed at preventing racial housing discrimination has further underscored concerns about Trump’s housing policies. Please provide a different version.
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