The Trump administration’s July 24 executive order demanding that state and local governments criminalize and lock up unhoused people has shellshocked city and nonprofit leaders. They say it jeopardizes widely accepted “housing-first” policies.
Called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” the White House order depicts unhoused people as dangerous threats to society. “Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” it says.
The order asserts that two-thirds of unhoused people are drug addicts or have mental health conditions, and encourages using involuntary civil commitment to shift unhoused people into “long-term institutional settings” to “restore public order.”
The order threatens to withhold grant funding from the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Transportation to local governments that don’t crack down on public drug use and “loitering” or sleeping in city streets and parks. It also incentivizes local governments to dismantle tent communities and institutionalize or jail unhoused people.
“It’s a prelude to dystopia,” said Tim Franzen, a local housing advocate with the American Friends Service Committee. Citing the calls to incarcerate and involuntarily institutionalize unhoused people, he said, “I can imagine two things: internment camps and deportations to other countries. There’s going to be a real segregation of these people from society.”
The executive order aims to end “housing first” policies, which hinge on the widely embraced — and academically supported — belief that getting people into stable housing is key to getting them sober and mentally healthy. Instead, it prioritizes forcing unhoused people into mental health or addiction treatment programs to qualify for housing.
Cathryn Vassell, the head of the city of Atlanta’s go-to homeless services agency, Partners for HOME, said this is backwards thinking.
“We’ve been down this road before and seen the harmful effects of institutionalization and sobriety and treatment requirements [to obtain housing],” she told Atlanta Civic Circle. “They were not effective. We stand behind the need for increased investment in the appropriate permanent housing solutions, without which we will just further prolong their homelessness and exacerbate trauma among those who are most vulnerable.”
Vassell added that a focus on institutionalizing and incarcerating unhoused people will “100%” overwhelm metro Atlanta healthcare facilities and jails. Their capacity is already strained, due to the 2022 closure of the Atlanta Medical Center and chronic jail overcrowding.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement that the city does not plan to shift its approach to homeless services and housing — but he added that Atlanta needs outside funding from the federal level on down for these programs, especially to pay for supportive services for unhoused people.
“For the past several years, the city of Atlanta has made significant investments to house our unhoused neighbors with dignity and compassion, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to continue to do so,” Dickens said in the statement to Atlanta Civic Circle. “However, this is a challenge no city can solve alone. We need increased support from our federal, state, local, and philanthropic partners and families — especially for critical wraparound services like mental health care, substance abuse treatment and long-term case management.”
Atlanta already receives far less HUD money for homeless services than similar-sized cities, such as Miami and Boston — and the White House’s order could reduce that funding if Atlanta officials don’t abide by the edict.
The White House’s order comes one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities can criminally prosecute unhoused people for sleeping on public land. In the landmark City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, the court decided that imposing civil and criminal penalties upon people for urban camping does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
At the time, the Dickens administration and Vassell said the Grants Pass decision would not cause Atlanta to increase its arrests of unhoused people. But neither the mayor’s office nor the Atlanta Police Department said how this new executive order could affect the policing of homelessness. Dickens’ office did, however, point out that violent crime is on the decline in Atlanta.
Putting homeless people in jail is not the answer and all homeless people are not drug addicts or mental health! Trump is very wrong for this new law….
I know, I know…… move everyone to each city’s trailer parks.
It was the next illogically cruel step for a regime and party/ cult of personality that has declared war on the poor, working class, unhoused and unsocumented migrants of color. None of this should be a surprise to any right thinking American!
This administration is just shy of trying to bring back slavery.
Truth
Typical for a regime that idolizes Hitler’s methods.
I’m fine supporting the working homeless, or truly disabled people that no treatment or drug rehab can return to productivity. But i am not ok with my tax dollars going into a black hole of providing housing for people who don’t work 8 hours a day. It is just not sustainable. One way or another, someone has to work to support a person. It should be the person themselves, unless they are physically or mentally handicapped and with no existing treatment available that can get them ready for work.