WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, disagreed on the root causes of the high cost of housing in the first and only vice presidential debate. 

Walz repeatedly pressed the idea that housing should be seen as more than an "asset" or a "commodity." 

"A house is more than just an asset," he said. 

The comments likely referenced growing institutional ownership of the housing market, an issue already hit on directly by current Vice President Kamala Harris in her presidential campaign. 

"This issue of housing — and I think those of you listening on this — the problem we've had is that we've got a lot of folks that see housing as another commodity," Walz said. "It can be bought up, it can be shifted, it can be moved around. Those are not folks living in those houses." 

The Harris campaign has proposed a number of housing policies that aim to make a home purchase more affordable, such as a 25,000 subsidy for first-time buyers. She also called on Congress to pass a bill that would prevent an investor who acquires 50 or more single-family rental homes from deducting interest and depreciation on those properties, as well as that would make it illegal for rental property owners to use companies that coordinate rental housing prices. 

"Some corporate landlords, some of them buy dozens, if not hundreds, of houses and apartments, then they turn them around and rent them out at extremely high prices," Harris said in an August speech. "And it can make it impossible, then, for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home." 

Vance, meanwhile, repeatedly pinned economic issues, such as inflation, on the policies of the Biden administration, and on Harris' role within that administration.

 "If she wants to enact all of these policies to make housing more affordable, I invite her to use the office that the American people already gave her, not sit around and campaign and do nothing while Americans find the American dream of homeownership completely unaffordable," he said.

Vance also said that immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally have also contributed to the housing shortage. 

"You've got housing that's totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans," he said. 

Vance also backed a plan promoted by former President Donald Trump to build new houses on seized federal lands. 

Vance said that high regulation, which he tied to Harris, is to blame for unaffordable housing. 

"It is also the regulatory regime of Kamala Harris. Look, we are a country of builders," he said. "We're a country of doers. We're a country of explorers, but we increasingly have a federal administration that makes it harder to develop our resources, makes it harder to build things, and wants to throw people in jail for not doing everything exactly as Kamala Harris says they have to do." 

He said that he agreed with Walz's point about housing being a "commodity," but again sought to draw a connection with immigration policies. 

"We should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity, but the thing that has most turned housing into a commodity is giving it away to millions upon millions of people who have no legal right to be here," he said. 

Walz said that immigration isn't the root cause, and that the government could play a role in boosting housing supply, and therefore address the problem of housing affordability. 

"We can't blame immigrants … that's not the case that's happening in many cities," he said. "The fact of the matter is that we don't have enough naturally affordable housing, but we can make sure that the government is there to kickstart it."