Putting migrant shelters in local hotels has absolutely zero effect on what the houses nearby are worth.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Do Migrant Shelter Hotels Cause "Native Flight"?: Evidence from NYC Housing Markets
SSRN · 6447258
The Takeaway
Despite the political fear that migrant arrivals destroy local housing markets, data from NYC shows no drop in home prices or sales. Even in the most politically contentious areas, the market remained completely unaffected by the presence of new shelters.
From the abstract
This paper leverages the staggered timing in NYC hotel-to-migrant shelter conversions to identify a potential "native flight" mechanism in housing and rental markets. Estimates from a differencein-differences specification show no evidence of native flight in Zillow market indicators, even in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of non-Hispanic White residents. A complementary proximity-based analysis likewise finds that property sales prices were unaffected by shocks to the local migra