More than a third of the country's roofers, drywall installers, masons and plasterers are undocumented. They are not competing for the housing supply — they are the housing supply.

American housing is expensive because the country spent two decades building far fewer homes than households it formed. That shortfall is a story about zoning, interest rates, land costs and construction labor. It is not a story about who is renting the units that do exist.

The labor half of that story runs directly through the people this myth blames. More than one third of the nation's plasterers, masons, drywall installers and roofers are undocumented. Remove them and you have not freed up housing — you have slowed down the only thing that actually lowers housing costs, which is building more of it, while raising the price of every remaining trade hour.

The American Immigration Council's modeling of mass deportation finds construction, agriculture and hospitality losing more than 2.5 million workers combined, with construction costs rising sharply and homebuilding slowing considerably as a direct result.

There is a version of this complaint that is true and worth saying out loud: rent is too high and wages have not kept up. The people who benefit from you blaming a roofer for that are the ones who spent thirty years blocking new construction.