Solving Homelessness Isnt a Partisan Experiment

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Much as he did during his first term, President Donald Trump has been insisting lately that he — and perhaps he alone — knows how to fix the homelessness crisis that has long bedeviled American cities.

In an executive order issued last week, Trump called for the mass removal of street encampments, and proposed sending the nearly 300,000 people who live in them to jail or long-term institutional facilities for substance abuse or mental health treatment — whether they want to go or not. To accomplish this goal, crucial federal funding for housing and social services would be used as leverage, given only to cities and states that adopt a more permissive stance on involuntary commitments and crack down on open-air drug use and loitering.

Trump described the plan as a “public safety” approach designed to end “endemic vagrancy” and “disorderly behavior.” And to be sure, it will have supporters, especially in Democratic-run Western states where most people who lack housing sleep outdoors rather than in shelters. California, with its reputation for squalid encampments in middle-class neighborhoods, accounts for almost half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. 

But ultimately, Trump’s plan is bound to fall short of its vaguely stated goals. That’s because his executive order misdiagnoses the problem of homelessness as a failure of strategy by Democrats, rather than as a failure of both political parties to consistently provide cities and states with adequate resources.

Consider that much of what Trump is proposing, draconian though it may seem to some, isn’t all that different from what many Democratic mayors and governors are already doing. 

Last year, dozens of elected officials from California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona filed amicus briefs in a case involving Grants Pass, Oregon, asking the US Supreme Court to grant them greater authority to clear encampments from public spaces and arrest homeless people. The court’s conservative majority did as asked. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom promptly issued an executive order directing state agencies to remove tents from state-owned property and urged cities and counties to do the same — even threatening to withhold housing funds from jurisdictions that failed to comply with his demands.

California was also among the first of many Democratic-run states to expand its involuntary commitment laws, making it easier to force homeless people into treatment for substance abuse. Newsom has called it a way to ensure “people get the help they need and the respect they deserve.”

New York, meanwhile, now allows first responders to involuntarily commit severely mentally ill people who cannot care for themselves. And, after years of contentious debate, Oregon is moving forward with similar legislation.

Newsom’s spokesperson, Tara Gallegos, called Trump’s executive order an “imitation” that “even poorly executed is the highest form of flattery.”

The partisan politics of homelessness has clearly changed. But the need for resources has not.

If a more aggressive approach to clearing encampments is going to succeed, it will only do so if there is sufficient money for both treatment and housing for the people who live in them. Yet the Trump administration, through its One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will gut Medicaid — the program that funds many of the services that keep homeless people, many of whom are disabled, off the streets and in care.

In addition, the administration previously announced plans to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in grants used to treat addiction. Drug overdoses kill more than 84,000 Americans every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet it’s no coincidence that overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs have been on the decline in recent years, following a flood of Covid-era grants during the Biden administration.

Scores of federal homelessness and affordable housing grants also are at risk — a potentially dire scenario in high-cost cities and states. As Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center put it — echoing many civil liberties groups — Trump’s executive order “does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet.”

It’s even unclear whether states, many beset with budget deficits, will have the money to fund enough beds in institutional settings — or in jails — for all of the additional homeless people that Trump wants off the streets.

He apparently doesn’t see resources as the issue, though. As he says in his executive order, “the Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness.”

It’s a fair point. The unhoused population increased by 18% nationwide last year, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. But it’s worth pointing out that in California — which spends more money on homelessness than any other state and, under Newsom, has been more aggressive in removing encampments — the increase was only 3%.

Trump should remember that no matter the strategy, fixing the homelessness crisis requires investment in American cities, not budget cuts. 

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Erika D. Smith is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She is a former Los Angeles Times columnist and Sacramento Bee editorial board member.

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