President Donald Trump signed an executive order on July 24 titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” The order shifts the federal approach from voluntary, housing-focused interventions to a system emphasizing involuntary commitment, institutional treatment, and law enforcement measures.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 771,000 Americans are homeless, with 274,224 Americans sleeping outside. Thirty-four percent of those people were categorized as families with children. Approximately 32,880 are veterans and 146,154 are over the age of 55.
Homelessness in the United States rose by 18% over the past year.
The primary driver of the spike is an acute lack of affordable rental units. As home prices and rents rise faster than wages, more people are priced out of their homes. Median rents increased by about 20% in recent years, while incomes have not kept pace.
According to the executive order, federal agencies to end funding for programs that operate under Housing First principles, which emphasize providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness without preconditions like sobriety or treatment participation. Federal funding is to be prioritized for states and municipalities that enforce bans on urban camping, loitering, and public drug use, and that do not operate programs which “permit drug use or prioritize housing without treatment.”
This declaration comes in the face of trials that found that Housing First led to a quicker exit from homelessness and greater housing stability over time. Multiple randomized controlled trials demonstrate that Housing First programs reduce homelessness by 88% and improve housing stability by 41% compared to treatment-first approaches.
Since 2011, Houston has achieved a 63% reduction in its total homeless population, serving as a Housing First national model.
Both Rockford, Ill. and Fremont County, Co. have reached “functional zero,” meaning they have effective systems to house new and existing homeless veterans or chronically homeless people almost as soon as they are identified.
Between 2022 and 2023, Chattanooga, Tenn. cut homelessness by 49%, including an 88% drop among families with children using housing first principles and Dallas and Dallas County, Tx. reported a 3.8% decline in overall homelessness, a 14% reduction among unsheltered individuals, and a 32% drop in chronic homelessness in the past year.
Internationally, Finland’s Housing First program provides a compelling counterexample, achieving a 68% reduction in long-term homelessness between 2008-2022.
Canada’s $110 million five-city At Home/Chez Soi trial found that Housing First participants spent 73% of their time in stable housing compared with 32% of those who received treatment as usual. After two years, 62% of Housing First participants were housed the whole time compared to 31% of those required to participate in treatment prior to receiving housing.
Within the executive order, the Attorney General is also directed to “seek the reversal of Federal or 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.”
Additionally, federal housing programs are authorized to collect health-related information from all assistance recipients and share this data with law enforcement authorities.
The executive order coincides with massive federal healthcare cuts that could undermine its stated objectives.
The recently passed budget bill cuts federal Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, potentially affecting 16 million people who could lose coverage. The Trump administration has already revoked $11.4 billion in COVID-era grants for addiction and mental health programs administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Federal homelessness assistance programs (HUD), which provide approximately $3.6 billion annually, will be redirected toward compliance-based rather than housing-focused initiatives.
The order revives the concept of “vagrancy” as a justification for sweeping law enforcement and institutional measures. The order claims that “endemic vagrancy” is a major cause of urban disorder, linking it to mental illness, substance abuse, and threats to public safety.
The language frames vagrancy (i.e., visible homelessness or street presence) as a problem to be solved by removal to treatment centers, institutionalization under expanded civil commitment laws, or exclusion from public spaces. This marks a return to the historic use of vagrancy laws: shifting the legal system from treating homelessness as a social problem to a public order/criminal issue, reminiscent of earlier centuries’ social control strategies.
The term reintroduces vague, punitive, and discriminatory enforcement practices long linked to abuses against marginalized populations.
Should this executive order come to be, another issue is the amount of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States. Emergency departments are already overwhelmed with psychiatric patients, with hospitals operating at 144% capacity for mental health treatment. This boarding crisis means patients often wait days in emergency rooms for psychiatric beds.
The U.S. currently has only 28.4 inpatient psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, which is over 30 beds fewer than considered optimal. State psychiatric hospitals have only 11 beds per 100,000 population, with over half occupied by forensic patients
Advocates and civil rights organizations argue it returns to a punitive, institutional model historically associated with human rights abuses and loss of due process. The concern is that “long-term civil commitment” based on broad and poorly defined criteria could again disproportionately target the most marginalized, especially if mental illness or public disorder is loosely defined, and institutionalization is used in place of social programs or housing support.
Critics explicitly draw comparisons to past abuses (and to practices in other authoritarian regimes) where institutionalization was used against “undesirable” or dissenting groups. There is evidence that such policies historically resulted in widespread mistreatment and denied civil liberties to large swaths of people, many of whom would not be considered “mentally ill” by modern standards.
