WASHINGTON, D.C. – Unhoused people who are dealing with mental illness or substance use issues will be involuntarily committed, while treatment programs that look to make them safter will be defunded under an executive order issued by President Donald Trump Thursday.
Civil rights activists and advocates for the homeless across the country blasted the “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order, which they say criminalizes homelessness and will increase the homeless crisis.
Trump, in the order, says that federal and state governments “have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.”
The National Homeless Center, though, said in a news release, “This Executive Order is rooted in outdated, racist myths about homelessness and will undoubtedly make homelessness worse.”
Trump’s order takes particular aim at programs that have long been proven to make unhoused people safer, in the absence of adequate care and shelter. It calls for institutionalizing, and in some cases, incarcerating, the unhoused.
“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” the order says. “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.”
The executive order stems from a campaign promise Trump made a year ago after the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities can ban homeless encampments, and can fine and arrest homeless people, but don’t have to provide shelter or alternatives.
The order calls for:
- Prioritizing funding for states that treat homelessness as a crime and increasing involuntary institutionalization for homeless individuals, including more money for cities that eliminate homeless encampments and take legal action against the unhoused;
- Pulling grant money from cities that promote harm-reduction programs, which is aimed at reducing overdoses and drug-related illness, helping homeless people survive when housing and treatment are hard to come by. The order says that these programs encourage drug use, that has been disproved, including by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Investigating whether programs that provide clean needles and other substance-use harm mitigation should face criminal charges;
- Incarcerating people with substance use or mental health issues if there are no mental health beds available in hospitals or jails.
- More support for law-based approaches like drug and mental health courts.
- Requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to gather health histories for any individual who receives federal homeless aid money, and for that information to be shared with law enforcement.
The order also calls for expanding services that include separate shelter for women and children, more funding for prisoner release programs (along with stricter release and enforcement requirements), and providing “technical assistance to assisted outpatient treatment programs for individuals with serious mental illness or addiction during and after the civil commitment process focused on shifting such individuals off of the streets and public programs and into private housing and support networks.”
All of those service expansions cost money that hasn’t been available in the past, and the lack of money is one of the reasons homelessness has become such a crisis, advocates for the unhoused have said. Private housing and support networks are also hard to come by, because they’re expensive to run, hard to find locations for, and need federal grant money to operate.
Defunding housing-first initiatives
One big aim of the order is to end funding for transitional living and homelessness programs that have housing-first provisions. Housing-first focuses on getting unhoused people into a living space, and then addressing treatment. The order says that such programs “deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.”
Advocates of housing-first say that many people with substance abuse and mental illness issues can’t focus on treatment until they have a stable living arrangement.
Manchester’s homelessness initiatives FAQs points out, “Housing First offers support (such as substance use treatment, legal aid, or job training) at the same time as housing and continues to offer support long after people are housed to prevent them from losing their home again.”
It adds that “forced mental health or substance use treatment,” which is a priority of the executive order “is proven to be largely ineffective and to have unintended, harmful, even deadly consequences.”
The page says that it’s a myth that housing first is ineffective and expensive.
“Decades of research prove how effective and cost-effective Housing First can be,” the city webpage says. “Studies show that 9 out of 10 people remain housed a year after receiving Housing First assistance, and that housing can be three times cheaper than criminalization. According to a recent study, Housing First pays for itself within 1.5 years and can reduce homelessness and government reliance—all while getting people back to work.”
‘Forcing more people into homelessness’
The NHLC said the executive order, “Combined with MAGA’s budget cuts for housing and healthcare, will increase the number of people forced to live in tents, in their cars, and on the streets. This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet.
“The safest communities are those with the most housing and resources, not those that make it a crime to be poor or sick,” the statement says. “Forced treatment is unethical, ineffective, and illegal. People need stable housing and access to healthcare. Rather, Trump’s actions will force more people into homelessness, divert taxpayer money away from people in need, and make it harder for local communities to solve homelessness. “
The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement that said that housing and programs that address mental health are key to solving the problem, and the order does the opposite.
“Pushing people into locked institutions and forcing treatment won’t solve homelessness or support people with disabilities,” said Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. “The exact opposite is true – institutions are dangerous and deadly, and forced treatment doesn’t work.
“We need safe, decent, and affordable housing as well as equal access to medical care and voluntary, community-based mental health and evidence-based substance use treatment from trusted providers,” Katovich said. “But instead of investing in these proven solutions, President Trump is blaming individuals for systemic failures and doubling down on policies that punish people with nowhere else to go – all after signing a law that decimates Medicaid, the number one payer for addiction and mental health services.”
Katovich added, “Homelessness is a policy failure. Weaponizing federal funding to fuel cruel and ineffective approaches to homelessness won’t solve this crisis.”
Mental illness is not a crime
National Alliance on Mental Illness CEO Daniel H. Gillison Jr. said of the order, in promoting institutionalization of people with mental illness, “it raises grave concerns for NAMI and our community.”
“Mental illness is not a crime, and people with mental illness deserve to be treated as human beings, with dignity and respect,” Gillison said. “While we agree that homelessness is an urgent crisis in our country, to truly address the systemic causes of this crisis, we should be pouring resources into treatment to improve early access to care and investing in supportive housing and other wrap-around services.
“It’s always ideal – and best – for an individual to engage in their own treatment. Yet, too many NAMI families know that isn’t always possible,” Gillison said. “Unfortunately, yesterday’s order concerningly focuses broadly on institutionalization and not on real solutions that we know work in helping people lead better lives.”