The executive order signed to protect Americans from “endrious vagrants, disorderly behaviour, sudden conflict and violent attacks” caused by homelessness, was furious when local officials and homeless advocates were furious at its harsh tone, and while they grasped the hopeful message.
The order signed by Trump on Thursday requires federal agencies to reverse precedents. This requires that precedents or consent orders hinder US policies that “pose a risk to yourself or the public, or encourage civil commitments of individuals with mental illness who live on the streets and are unable to care for themselves.”
They ordered these agencies to “ensure availability of funds to support camp removal efforts.”
Mayor Karen Bass’ lifeline can be expanded depending on how the declaration is implemented.
In response to Friday’s order, Bass said the Medicaid administration’s cuts have affected “the flow of facilities for people, especially those with disabilities, especially those with disabilities,” while also plaguing that they would end street homelessness and move people to rehabilitation facilities.
“Of course I’m worried about punitive measures,” Bus said. “But first and foremost, if you want to end street homelessness, you need housing and services for the people on the streets.”
Kevin Murray, president and CEO of Weingart Center Homeless Services and Housing Agency, saw ambiguity in the language.
“I didn’t know if he was offering money to people who wanted to do it in his own way, or if he was taking money from people who didn’t do it in their own way,” Murray said.
Others took clues from the provocative tone of the order in the preamble, declaring that the 274,224 people reporting living on the streets in 2024, “declaring that they had reported drug addiction, mental health, or both.”
This order is contradictory to many research bodies that find that substance use and mental illness are important, but not excessive factors in homelessness. “Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report regular use of hard medications such as methamphetamine, cocaine and opioids throughout their lives. They report suffering from mental health, just like homeless individuals.”
A February survey by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative in San Francisco, California, reported that only about 37% of the more than 3,000 homeless people surveyed in California regularly used illegal drugs, but more than 65% reported using them regularly at some point in their lives. More than a third said their drug use had decreased after they became homeless, and one in five said they were interviewed.
“Like most executive orders, it doesn’t really affect itself,” said Steve Berg, chief policy officer for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “It tells federal agencies to do different things, and that affects them, depending on how they do those things.”
Specifically, the order seeks to divert funds from two pillars of mainstream homeless practice: “housing first,” the prioritization of permanent housing over temporary shelters, and the refusal of abstinence as a condition of service and housing, “harm reduction.”
According to the order, grants issued under the Department of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services “should not fund programs that fail to achieve appropriate outcomes, including so-called “harm reduction” or “safe consumption” initiatives that only promote illegal drug use and its associated harm.” And the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development should ultimately support support for a “housing first” policy that “will “disable accountability and not promote treatment, recovery and self-sufficiency” to the extent permitted by law.
To some extent, these themes reflect on the ongoing changes in the state and the local response to homelessness. Under pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Legislature has established rules that allow relatives and service providers to refer people to courts for treatment and expand the definition of people with gravity impairment to include substance use.
Locally, the Base Inside Safe Program and county counterpart Pathway Home was able to quickly drive people out of the streets, prioritizing expanding the provisional home.
But Trump’s order remains a controversial question of how much coercion is justified in eliminating the camp.
The Attorney General and other federal agencies said measures should be taken to ensure grants go to states and cities that enforce illegal drug use, city camping, lotus shaming and squatting to enforce bans.
Homeless advocacy groups viewed these orders as a promotion to criminalisation of homelessness and mental illness.
“We’re back to the days of ‘flying over the cuckoo’s nests,” Berg said, referring to the 1962 film and subsequent films that dramatized the oppressive situation of mental health institutions.
He said first protecting housing is the most cost-effective strategy for kicking people off the streets, the order encourages agencies to use their money in less cost-effective ways.
“What we want to do is reduce the number of homelessness,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the Trump administration’s goal.”
The National Center for Homelessness Law states, “This executive order is rooted in outdated racist myths about homelessness and will definitely make homeless. … Trump’s actions will drive more people homeless, avoid taxpayer money from those in need, and make it more difficult for local communities to resolve homelessness.”
Murray, who first describes himself as a housing fan, noted that the orderly imposed of key policies: citizen commitment, camp removal, substance use treatment – is already well-known in the state and has gained local responses to homelessness.
“I think it’s scary if you come from Trump,” Murray said. “It’s certainly overwhelming. It certainly misses the subtle nuances of real people with mental illness and substance use. But we’ve started most of the way of things like this.”
His main concern was that it could be interpreted as being applied to Section 8, the main federal financial tool for leading homeless people to housing.
He asked if the person holding the voucher refused treatment.
“We might encourage more people to stay on the streets,” he said. “It’s not easy to lead people to treatment.”
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