On July 25, President Trump’s latest attack on the vulnerable in our nation took the form of a misguided and cruel executive order encouraging the criminalization of homelessness, mental illness, and substance use disorders. After slashing Medicaid and removing health care access for as many as 17 million Americans, while failing to address the soaring costs of housing nationwide that drive homelessness, Trump has now declared that people experiencing homelessness who have medical issues should be rounded up by law enforcement and institutionalized. The order directs priority for federal housing funding to be given to states that have criminalized homelessness. This is a horrifying and inhumane disruption to established, successful housing-first programs, like those offered by AIDS Foundation Chicago (AFC) and our subsidiary the Center for Housing and Health, and would compromise one of our strongest tools for ending the HIV epidemic – permanent supportive housing.
This order is intended, the White House states, to “restore order to American cities.” Trump’s idea of “order” is now chillingly clear – repression and punishment of poor, Black, and Latine communities, a return to the dark ages medically and scientifically, oligarchy, and police-state authoritarianism.
“The Trump administration wants to force people experiencing homelessness into mental health and substance use treatment when we know that treatment centers don't have capacity,” said John Peller, President & CEO of AFC. “At the same time, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress made deep and devastating cuts to Medicaid that will further slash treatment capacity while making unhoused people ineligible for Medicaid coverage. These changes will worsen the homelessness crisis in America and further demonize people who are unhoused.”
AFC, our partners, housing sector leaders, and people with lived experience of homelessness oppose a law-enforcement based approach to solving the country’s affordable housing crisis. We are safest when we ensure people have the resources they need.
“Housing is a human right, period. The Trump administration continues its long list of human rights abuses by seeking to slash affordable housing funding and institutionalize people who are struggling because they cannot afford a home. This undermines decades of research on what solves homelessness and saves taxpayer dollars. The Trump administration's approach is both morally wrong and fiscally wasteful,” said Peter Toepfer, Executive Director of the Center for Housing and Health.
We agree with Trump on one thing - we would also like to see people experiencing homelessness off the street. But we know the only solution to homelessness is housing – and the most effective way is through permanent supportive housing, where a housing-first approach is coupled with supportive services like case management, mental health care, and substance use treatment. This evidence-based model empowers individuals to stabilize and thrive. Trump’s order, conversely, will promote the growth of the private prison industry – another giveaway to his billionaire donors – and create revolving door facilities where a permanent underclass of the poor and vulnerable cycle from street to incarceration endlessly, without the support they need and deserve for a stable and healthy life.
We promise to fight against this order with everything we’ve got. It’s cruel, wrong, and precisely the opposite of what American cities and our neighbors experiencing homelessness need to ensure our safety and stability. We know this order is not about making our cities safe – it's a way to redirect attention from Trump's failure to control inflation and housing costs, to cloak another cruel, racist policy in the rhetoric of public safety, and to gut our social safety net to pay for tax breaks for his billionaire friends. We encourage Trump to fulfill one of his primary campaign promises – addressing the escalating costs of living and housing in this country – if he really wants to tackle the roots of the homelessness crisis in America.
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