The city of Springfield, Ohio, is begging for federal help with a housing crisis caused by a surge of illegal migrants. City Manager Bryan...
The city of Springfield, Ohio, is begging for federal help with a housing crisis caused by a surge of illegal migrants.
City Manager Bryan Heck on Monday sent an urgent letter to Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Tim Scott (R-SC) asking for federal aid.
The city manager explained that Springfield is struggling to accommodate up to 20,000 new migrants from Haiti.
“Springfield has seen a surge in population through immigration that has significantly impacted our ability as a community to produce enough housing opportunities for all,” Heck wrote.
“Springfield’s Haitian population has increased to 15,000 – 20,000 over the last four years in a community of just under 60,000 previous residents, putting a significant strain on our resources and ability to provide ample housing for all of our residents,” he said.
The city is set to have 2,000 more housing units over the next three to five years, but “this is still not enough,” the letter said.
“Again, without further support at the Federal level, communities like Springfield are set up to fail in being able to meet the housing needs of its residents,” Heck wrote.
The letter was presented by Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) during Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Scott is the committee’s ranking member and chairs a subcommittee on housing.
Vance noted that Springfield is “trying to build 5,000 new housing units, which is a very Herculean task in a town of about 55,000 people.”
“But it’s also hospital services, it’s school services. There are a whole host of ways in which this immigration problem, I think, is having very real human consequences,” Vance said.
Other cities have suffered similar crises over the last two years.
New York City has seen an influx of more than 180,000 illegal migrants over the past two years and is still housing many of them. Chicago is currently paying to shelter about 13,000 of the more than 44,000 migrants who have arrived in the city over the last two years. Both cities have scrambled to find housing as their finances were squeezed.
Overall, around 12 million migrants have entered the country illegally under the Biden administration.
There have been more than 9.5 million migrant encounters as well as about 1.7 million illegal migrant gotaways, according to immigration authorities.
Earlier this year, immigration surged to become the top issue on voters’ minds, bumping inflation down to second place, polls showed.
Upon taking office, President Joe Biden reversed many of former President Donald Trump’s border policies aimed at slowing the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, including the Remain in Mexico policy, which forced illegal migrants to stay on the Mexican side of the border while they awaited asylum hearings.
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