Futuristic government planned cities with flying cars and mass deportations of immigrants leaving all their homes vacant. Donald Trump’s plan to solve the housing problem sounds like a cross between a Soviet official’s plan and that of a science fiction fan. But while the American elections are already underway, the Republican candidate’s proposals are beginning to arouse concern among experts.
Trump’s first idea, announced a year ago, was that of “Freedom Cities”. In his “Agenda 47” (in reference to the historic number on the list of presidents that Joe Biden’s successor will occupy), the tycoon proposes a public competition to build 10 new major cities on government-owned land. These cities would have “air mobility,” meaning cars that could move vertically, and would represent “an injection of cash into rural America.”
But the plan wouldn’t stop there. People who settled in these cities could work there Product factories currently manufactured by Chinawhich would stop entering the United States. And to cause a new “baby boom,” Trump would ask Congress to approve a “baby check” so that the people who settled there would have many children.
Of course, the list of problems with this plan is very long. Starting with the fact that flying cars are still far from becoming something we see on the streets, and that these vehicles would only make sense if these new big cities were full of skyscrapers, which what the citizens of the country have been doing for decades. . rejection in favor of single-family houses in the suburbs.
The biggest problem is that the vast majority of government-owned land is in deserts or nature reserves in the west of the countrythe most inhospitable region in the United States. The creation of several megacities in Nevada, such as Las Vegas, would create a gigantic problem with the already scarce water supply. And building them in Alaska or the mountains of Wyoming would pose enormous transportation and supply problems: there are virtually no roads, and building airports on such uneven terrain is already extremely complicated. Added to this is the enormous cost that this would entail: the price of Egyptian “New Cairo” already exceeds 58 billion. Multiplying this by 10 would give exorbitant figures for a country with a skyrocketing public deficit and especially for a president who plans to lower taxes even further.
Of course, this plan would be long term. In the short term, Trump’s big plan to facilitate access to housing is much simpler: expel up to “20 million” immigrants from the countryboth illegal migrants and many legal migrants, from whom Trump wants to revoke their residence permits by decree.
Vice Vance, the anti-immigration striker
During the vice-presidential debate, the number two Republican candidate, JD Vance, explained that They would revoke the residence permit, for example, of Venezuelans or Haitians who entered the United States legally.with special authorization in the face of the political and economic crises experienced by their respective countries. And then they would be deported, along with all illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for years or decades, back to their home countries. Asked what would happen if their countries of origin did not agree to receive them, Vance said the government would “impose enormous tariffs” on products from those countries.
What impact would this have on housing? Detaining and deporting all these immigrants would leave millions of empty houseswhich could be expropriated and resold to other people, in a sort of homage to the expulsion of the Jews by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.
Of course, analysts warn that this decision could lead to a unprecedented mortgage crisis: A study of a program implemented between 2005 and 2012 to deport undocumented Hispanic immigrants caused an increase in mortgage bankruptcies in all counties in which it was implemented, by approximately 22,000 mortgages per county . The hole in bank accounts that would lead to the eviction of millions of mostly mortgaged homeowners could endanger the country’s financial stability. That, without counting the sudden collapse of work, consumption and taxes paid by all these millions of peoplewhich would trigger another Great Recession, according to a University of New Hampshire study.
Yet Trump promised start deportation with at least one million peopleusing a 1796 law that authorized the expulsion of “alien enemies of the United States,” a category in which all immigrants would be included at once. A movement that can trigger an even bigger crisis than the one it aims to resolve.
