With the sight of homeless encampments plaguing cities nationwide, President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to get many of the homeless off the streets and into “long-term institutional settings.”
The announcement came as Trump toured the ongoing multi-billion-dollar Federal Reserve building complex construction project.
Citing addiction and mental health issues as leading causes for homelessness, Trump’s executive action argues that states and the federal government have failed to address homelessness’s “root causes,” adding that the problem leaves “other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.”
The order targets safe injection sites and other community services that critics of those programs argue only enable drug use.
The president’s order outlines a plan to place homeless individuals in “long-term institutional” facilities for “humane treatment.” It underscores that the status quo is “neither compassionate to the homeless” or to others.
The White House claims there were 274,224 “individuals living on the streets” across the country “on a single night during the last year” of the Biden administration.
The order calls for the attorney general and the secretary of Health and Human Services to partner to “seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”
In addition, the federal government would be charged with offering assistance in the form of grants and “technical guidance” to provide institutional treatment for individuals who pose a risk to themselves or others and “cannot care for themselves.”
The order provides “priority” for grantees in localities and states actively cracking down on open drug dens, homeless encampments and squatting. It would restrict federal funds to support “harm reduction” or “consumption” sites, which the White House argues “facilitate[s]” drug use.
The order didn’t indicate a price tag for the president’s plan.
