Caught in the Housing Bubble: Immigrants' housing outcomes in traditional gateways and newly emerging destinations

Authors Gary Painter and Zhou Yu discuss demographic shifts of immigrants in metropolitan and rural areas that have experienced the depths of the recession. Using 2006 and 2009 American Community Survey microdata, Caught in the Housing Bubble: Immigrants' housing outcomes in traditional gateways and newly emerging destinations assesses how the recent economic crisis has affected immigrants with respect to three housing outcomes (residential mobility, homeownership, and household formation) to compare housing outcomes at two important time points in the recent economic cycle.  

The results suggest the early impact of the recession has not been as severe on immigrants as one might expect. In particular, the places where immigrant populations are newest have not experienced reductions 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 native-born households. 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, changes in unemployment rates and increases in metropolitan level default rates have a negative impact on homeownership rates.

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