Trump’s ‘dystopian’ crackdown on homelessness
The Trump administration issued a July 24 executive order, demanding that state and local governments lock up unhoused people, that has shellshocked city and nonprofit leaders. They say it upends widely embraced “housing-first” policies — which hinge on the belief that getting people into stable housing is key to getting them sober and mentally healthy.
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 claims 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, 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.”
Trump’s anti-homeless executive order could spur lawsuits
When the Trump administration in January issued an executive order to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, national nonprofits successfully sued to block it.
Now, advocacy groups nationwide are strategizing over a similar lawsuit to stop the White House’s new order that threatens pulling federal funding from local governments that don’t crack down on unhoused people. But that could prove tricky, said Jesse Rabinowitz, the communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center.
“This administration doesn’t care about the Constitution,” he said during a virtual press conference hosted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “They are constantly violating people’s rights all over the place.”
“There are many clear violations of the right to due process — the right to many civil liberties — and the legal community is prepared to challenge many parts of this order,” Rabinowitz added.
But a landmark US Supreme Court decision in 2024 could complicate any legal challenge to the executive order. In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court ruled that imposing civil and criminal penalties on people for urban camping does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. That could present an obstacle to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new executive order.
HEARD ON HOUSING
U.S. Senate Banking Committee advances bipartisan legislation to accelrate housing supply
“Many people around the country are frustrated with the way we do American politics wonder, is there any issue that brings this nation together and I’m here to say, halleluiah! We have found one – it is housing.”
– Sen. Tim Scott (R- SC)
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chair Tim Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) celebrated the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act of 2025.
The July 29 legislative package is the committee’s first bipartisan housing markup in more than a decade.
→ Check out the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation’s summary of the sections most likely to impact housing affordability and housing supply.
A battle brews over the Westside Tax Allocation District
A Fulton County proposal to pull out of the Westside Tax Allocation District (TAD) has ignited a battle over the future of affordable housing in some of Atlanta’s most underserved neighborhoods.
Two Fulton commissioners raised a contentious question in their proposed resolution: Is it worth diverting property tax revenue to subsidize lower-priced housing at the expense of funding for schools, healthcare, and public safety?
In short, TADs capture the growth in property tax revenue from rising property values. The city, county, and public school district in the TAD must agree to forgo that revenue, which is then redirected to private developers to subsidize economic development in underinvested communities.
Fulton’s share of the Westside TAD money is managed by Invest Atlanta, which often uses it to back bonds that finance residential and commercial projects in neighborhoods like English Avenue and Vine City.
Fulton is supposed to participate in the Westside TAD through 2038, but the proposed withdrawal resolution says the Westside TAD special fund already has a balance higher than what’s needed to pay off the bond debt. Fulton’s share of the excess balance was about $5.85 million a year ago, it adds. Even so, the county anticipates contributing an additional $9.4 million in tax revenue this year. So what happens if Fulton’s Board of Commissioners votes to “decline participation in new projects” in the TAD?
“Best case scenario, it would slow affordable housing development. Worst case, it would stop it altogether,” said Courtney English, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ interim chief of staff and the former Atlanta Public Schools (APS) board chair.
Atlanta Housing’s real estate boss steps down
After a year on the job, Atlanta Housing’s (AH) top real estate executive, Alan Ferguson, stepped down on Aug. 1.
Ferguson, AH’s chief housing and real estate officer, joined the public housing authority in June 2024, after leading Atlanta Habitat for Humanity for two years. He’d previously served as the senior vice president of development and operations at the American Opportunity Foundation, a housing nonprofit, and spent eight years working for Invest Atlanta.
An AH spokesperson declined to say why he left, but Ferguson told Atlanta Civic Circle via text that he departed to explore his “next chapter.”
“It was my decision,” he said. “I haven’t been fired from a job since I worked at Captain D’s in high school. And even they hired me back,” he joked.
Maya Hodari, AH’s senior vice president of real estate, is serving as interim real estate chief.
Today’s newsletter was written by Sean Keenan and edited by Meredith Hobbs. Your donation makes Housing Happenings and ACC’s housing reporting possible. Support local, nonprofit journalism that empowers Atlantans to improve their communities.