XPost: alt.society.homeless, alt.politics.republicans, sac.politics
XPost: or.politics

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday making it
easier for local jurisdictions to remove homeless people from the
streets.

The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial
precedents and end consent decrees” that limit jurisdictions’
abilities to relocate homeless people. It also redirects federal
resources so that affected homeless people are transferred to
rehabilitation and substance misuse facilities.

It also directs Bondi to work with Health and Human Services
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Scott Turner and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to
fast-track federal funding to states and municipalities that crack
down on “open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and
urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.”

On Friday, the president suggested the order marked a common-sense
approach to the nation’s homelessness problem.

“Right outside, there were some tents, and they’re getting rid of
them right now, you can’t do that — especially in Washington, DC. I
talk to the mayor about it all the time, I said you gotta get rid
of the tents,” Trump told a reporter on the White House South Lawn.
“We can’t have it — when leaders come to see me to make a trade
deal for billions and billions and even trillions of dollars, and
they come in and there’s tents outside of the White House, we can’t
have that. It doesn’t sound nice.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement
Thursday that the executive order was part of Trump’s commitment to
“end homelessness across America.”

“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting
resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration
will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and
that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health
struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.

Advocates for the homeless condemned the executive orders with some
saying that it will make homelessness worse for communities.

“These executive orders ignore decades of evidence-based housing
and support services in practice. They represent a punitive
approach that has consistently failed to resolve homelessness and
instead exacerbates the challenges faced by vulnerable
individuals,” said Donald Whitehead, executive director of the
National Coalition for the Homeless, in a press release.

The National Homelessness Law Center said the order “deprives
people of their basic rights and makes it harder to solve
homelessness” in a statement on Thursday. The group said the order
will expand the use of police and institutionalization in response
to homelessness, while increasing the number of people living in
tents, cars and on the streets.

Order follows high court decision
The order comes a month after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of
an Oregon city that ticketed homeless people for sleeping outside.
Justices rejected arguments that such “anti-camping” ordinances
violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.

The case had been watched closely by city and state officials who
have struggled to respond to a surge in homelessness and
encampments that have cropped up under bridges and in city parks
across the nation.

It was also followed by people who live in those encampments and
are alarmed by efforts to criminalize the population rather than
build shelters and affordable housing.

Homelessness in the US soared to the highest level on record last
year, driven by a lack of affordable housing, a rise in migrants
seeking shelter and natural disasters, which caused some people to
be displaced from their homes, according to the Department of
Housing and Urban Development.

More than 770,000 people experienced homelessness in 2024, an 18%
increase from 2023. It was the largest annual increase since HUD
began collecting the data in 2007 (excluding the jump from 2021 to
2022, when the agency didn’t conduct a full count due to the Covid-
19 pandemic).

As a candidate, Trump railed against the nation’s homeless crisis,
telling supporters during a September campaign rally it was
“destroying our cities.”

“The homeless encampments will be gone,” Trump said in remarks from
North Carolina. “They’re going to be gone. Oh, you have to see, you
have to – some of these encampments, what they’ve done to our
cities, and we’ve got to take care of the people.”

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/politics/trump-homeless-people- executive-order?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc&recs_exp=most- read-article-end&tenant_id=popular.en

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