President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on homelessness, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” is a dangerous shift in policy that will worsen life for millions of unhoused Americans.
It borrows punitive aspects of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s encampment crackdowns but goes further, dismantling proven homelessness strategies.
Stripping away Housing First and harm reduction approaches, expanding forced treatment without building treatment capacity, and wielding federal funds as a weapon against noncompliant states, Trump’s plan promises only more suffering, chaos and misery on America’s streets.
‘Criminalizing’ Poverty
Trump’s order prioritizes “law and order” above all else, compelling cities to enforce bans on outdoor sleeping, open drug use, camping, loitering and squatting. This means unhoused people will be treated as criminals.
California cities are moving in this direction: at least 50 municipalities have passed anti-camping ordinances since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that such bans are permissible even without available shelter beds.
Trump threatens to withhold federal funds from any city or state that fails to clear encampments.
We know where this leads. Criminalization does not end homelessness, it simply pushes people further into the shadows, cycling them through jails, emergency rooms and unsafe streets.
A 2019 National Homelessness Law Center report found that anti-camping laws increase police harassment, fines and incarceration, making escape from homelessness harder.
Trump’s order doubles down on this approach, weaponizing federal dollars to punish communities that don’t criminalize their poorest residents fast enough.
Attacking Housing First
Most alarming is Trump’s move to abolish federal support for Housing First.
This approach, adopted in California and nationwide since President George W. Bush’s administration, is based on a simple, evidence-backed premise: the first step in solving homelessness is providing housing, no strings attached.
“California faces a severe shortage of psychiatric beds, detox centers and supportive housing.”
Once housed, people can access treatment, seek work and rebuild their lives.
Housing First has a decades-long track record of success. A 2020 study in The Lancet Psychiatry found that Housing First programs dramatically reduce chronic homelessness, improve health outcomes and lower public costs compared to punitive, treatment-first models.
Cities that have invested heavily in Housing First — such as Houston, which reduced its homeless population by 63% over a decade — prove that the approach works.
By conditioning housing on sobriety or treatment compliance, Trump revives failed “tough love” policies that left vulnerable people on the streets. This is not a path to recovery; it is a recipe for mass suffering.
Harm Reduction
Trump’s policy also takes aim at harm reduction, cutting federal funding to organizations that distribute tools like clean needles or Narcan, the overdose-reversing medication that saves thousands of lives each year.
Nonprofit organizations like The People Concern in Los Angeles currently use state and private funds to provide these services, building trust and preventing fatal infections.
If the federal government criminalizes such efforts or cuts funding to agencies that provide them, many will be forced to scale back or shut down lifesaving outreach entirely.
Harm reduction is not an endorsement of drug use; it is a recognition that keeping people alive and safe is a prerequisite to recovery. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly affirmed that harm reduction saves lives, reduces the spread of infectious diseases and serves as a bridge to treatment.
Trump’s policy ignores this evidence, replacing science with stigma.
Forced Treatment
Trump promises to “ramp up” involuntary treatment for people with mental illness and substance use disorders.
Like Newsom’s CARE Court program in all 58 California counties, it expands the power of judges to mandate treatment.
But Trump’s plan goes further, tying federal funding to aggressive institutionalization without adding new treatment beds or supportive housing units.
The result will be dire. Even when people want treatment today, there are not enough facilities to accommodate them. California faces a severe shortage of psychiatric beds, detox centers and supportive housing.
Trump’s order would funnel more people into a nonexistent system, while stripping away supports that keep them alive while they wait for help. Forced treatment without capacity is not a solution, it’s a cruel illusion.
Federal Threats
Trump’s history of withholding funds suggests his order is about punishing states like California, not solving homelessness.
As Ryan Finnigan of the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation notes, the order is vague about what “compliance” looks like, allowing Trump to cut off funds if numbers don’t fall as he wants.
Meanwhile, his administration is already cutting funds for homeless services, affordable housing and Medicaid.
Starving programs of resources while threatening to punish cities for failing to end homelessness is political theater, not public policy.
Real Solutions
If Trump truly wanted to end homelessness, he would follow the evidence and scale up — not tear down — what works:
• Massive investment in affordable housing: The root cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable homes, not personal failings or weak policing. The United States is short millions of units for extremely low-income renters.
• Robust Housing First programs: Proven to reduce homelessness and save taxpayer money.
• Harm reduction and voluntary treatment: Evidence-based approaches that save lives.
• Increased public assistance and wages: Ensuring that people can afford rent and basic necessities.
• Civil rights protections: Policies that treat homelessness as a human rights issue.
Instead, Trump’s plan is a blueprint for increased deaths on the street, jails filled with unhoused people and a dismantled social safety net. It is a moral failure.