A luxurious Florida suburb, which hosts one of Donald Trump’s golf resorts, is facing a housing market downturn as its substantial immigrant population departs due to the president’s immigration policies.
Doral, a city with 80,000 inhabitants located around 25 miles northwest of Miami, has been witnessing a significant exit of its Venezuelan immigrant community, who compose approximately 40 percent of its residents.
Venezuelans are leaving Doral so swiftly that residents claim they are abandoning furniture and neglecting rent payments, with reports of some choosing to drive away at night to avoid encounters with federal authorities.
The city is home to Trump National Doral Golf Club, a golf resort owned by the president where memberships cost up to $150,000.
Apartment vacancy rates in Doral have notably increased as Trump’s immigration enforcement has strengthened, rising from 5.6 percent late last year to 6.5 percent.
This rate is roughly 50 percent higher than in adjacent municipalities, where the vacancy rate stands at 4.3 percent, with some buildings in Doral experiencing vacancy rates exceeding 10 percent.
Leasing agents have pointed the finger at the fleeing Venezuelan population.
‘They’re all telling me, “No, I can’t stay, my [temporary status] is expiring,”‘ shared Maria Eugenia Nucete, a Venezuelan-American real estate agent who has been working in Doral for many years, with the Wall Street Journal.
President Trump’s immigration policies have been blamed by some for Doral’s recent housing market crash
Even Venezuelans with temporary legal status are leaving Doral, fearful of getting snatched by ICE agents despite technically being allowed to live and work in the country
Doral is home to Trump National Doral Golf Club, a golf resort owned by the president where memberships cost up to $150,000
Even Venezuelans with temporary legal status are leaving, fearful of getting snatched by ICE agents as they carry out Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdowns.
Since retaking the White House in January, the administration has tried to strip Venezuelans of Temporary Protected Status and canceled Bidern-era humanitarian immigration programs that allowed hundreds of thousands to live and work in the US.
The whirlwind of policy changes regarding immigration since President Trump took office have taken away the legal status of many Doral residents, and left those who are still allowed to live and work there scared that they could be next.
As a result, those migrants are leaving in droves, with many opting to move back to Venezuela.
The republican mayor of Doral, Christi Fraga, said the city’s rising vacancy has been caused by a mix of factors, but she admitted that fear of deportation is driving many.
Fraga said she personally knew of some families who ‘self-deported,’ because their legal status was vulnerable and ‘they didn’t want to be here illegally.’
‘I’m sure it will affect the housing market to a certain extent,’ she added.
Apartment building owners in Doral have said they want to know a family’s immigration status before they rent apartments to them, because if those families are under temporary permission to live in the US, they are just one court ruling from abrupt deportation.
Doral has a huge population of Venezuelan immigrants, many of which supported Trump because they hoped he would remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power
The 1968 Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to discriminate against renters based on nationality or race, adding a layer of legal complexity to the decision of apartment owners to turn Venezuelans away from renting if they have temporary legal status.
Juan Arias, director of market analytics at the data company CoStar Group, told the Wall Street Journal that 70 percent of immigrants who have come to the US since 2010 are renters. Their exodus therefore has a particularly powerful negative impact on the rental market.
‘All of this immigration crackdown is a net negative to the entire multifamily world,’ Arias said.
Doral’s Venezuelan exodus comes as the Trump administration increases tensions with Venezeluan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
The majority of voters in Doral are registered Republicans, and many Venezuelans living in the city supported Trump because they believed he would remove Maduro from power.
Venezuelans who have been politically active against Maduro’s regime while living in the US face serious risk of persecution if they are deported.
The risk for those people only increases as the Trump administration places itself on a war footing against Maduro, deploying destroyers off the coast of Venezuela and bombing drug smuggling ships, all while claiming the country is safe to return to.
‘They’re not seeing us as a community affected by political problems, but as a number of migrants who could be deported to fulfill an electoral promise,’ José Antonio Colina, president of Venezuelans Persecuted in Political Exile, told El Pais.
‘The Venezuelan community that voted for Trump voted to remove Maduro from power, not to remove Venezuelans from the United States.’
