The Trump Administration is aiming to drastically alter the way the U.S. deals with homelessness with a Thursday executive order seeking to restore order on America’s streets and help the homeless by sending them to psychiatric institutions rather than leaving them to overdose or otherwise languish on public byways.
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“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe. The number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration — 274,224 — was the highest ever recorded. The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both,” said President Trump in the executive order.
“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens,” he added.
The order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” primarily aims to make American cities safer through a drastic shift in the way we deal with homelessness and vagrancy.
Attorney General (AG) Pam Bondi, with the help of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will work to reverse policies and judicial precedents that prevent or impede the civil commitment of mentally ill and homeless people who pose a threat to themselves and others.
The AG’s office will also work with states to help them establish standards to commit and treat those living on the streets who cannot care for themselves.
Under the policy outline, the federal government will evaluate its discretionary grants to determine whether cities and states that strictly enforce laws fighting homelessness and vagrancy can be preferred recipients.
Preference will be given based on enforcement for prohibitions on open drug consumption, urban camping, and squatting, as well as policies that commit mentally-ill homeless people and drug addicts to rehabilitation centers and mental institutions.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) will evaluate people arrested for federal crimes to determine whether they are potentially violent offenders and/or sexually dangerous and thus eligible for civil commitment.
Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance funds will be available to help cities struggling for resources clear homeless camps, the order says.
Bondi will also evaluate federal funds to determine if they can be used to ensure that detainees with severe mental health problems are not simply released back onto the streets.
The order shifts how funding will be apportioned from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
“Harm reduction” homeless centers that provide homeless people with a place to shoot up fentanyl consequence free with supervision from staffers waiting to revive them with Narcan will lose their funding. Instead, grants will go to programs that treat substance abuse that rehabilitate rather than facilitate drug use.
The AG will evaluate so-called “safe consumption sites” to determine whether they are in violation of federal law and if so prosecute them.
The radical shift in policy could help the country recover from a growing homelessness epidemic, but some on the right have warned that the provision allowing civil commitment of the mentally ill could backfire.
“I support this in theory. But it needs to be accompanied by absolutely massive reforms of the psychiatric industry, which I don’t see happening. The industry has labeled pretty much everything a mental illness, and they invent new ones every day,” said conservative commentator Matt Walsh on X.
“Without major reforms, this will enable psychiatrists to lock anyone away based on whatever bullshit diagnosis they come up with. Get ready for conservatism and other inconvenient ideologies to be labeled “mental disorders” which must be treated (for the patient’s own good of course) with involuntary commitment,” he added.
