President Trump signed an executive order aimed at restoring public safety to streets across the United States.
The order pushes cities and states to remove homeless people off the streets and into treatment centers.
“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. Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes,” the order read.
“An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions. The Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats,” it continued.
“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. My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety,” the order added.
“It’s not compassionate to let our homeless brothers and sisters suffer on our streets with no pathway to self-sufficiency. We cannot surrender our cities and citizens to illicit drug-induced disorder without addressing the root cause of substance abuse,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner said.
“@POTUS’ executive order reflects a compassionate, commonsense approach by helping the homeless off the streets and into treatment centers, off of drugs and onto roads of recovery,” he added.
It directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees” stopping or limiting cities and states from removing homeless individuals from the streets and moving them to treatment centers.
Though it is unclear how much money will be allocated to the effort, Trump’s order redirects federal funds to ensure that removed homeless individuals are sent to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities.
Additionally, the order requires Bondi to partner with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to prioritize federal grants to cities and states that “enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders,” according to USA Today.
The order also stipulates that discretionary grants for substance-use disorder prevention, treatment and recovery programs “do not fund drug injection sites or illicit drug use.”
The National Homelessness Law Center criticized the order, saying “criminalization doesn’t help anyone.”
“Trump’s new Executive Order directs states to treat homelessness and mental illness as crimes. Criminalization doesn’t help anyone – we need housing and healthcare, not handcuffs and budget cuts. #HousingNotHandcuffs,” it stated.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger applauded the Trump administration’s crackdown on government policies that encourage addiction.
“It’s better to let mentally ill people buy and use meth and fentanyl on sidewalks, believes Gavin Newsom, than arrest their drug dealers, and them, and mandate rehab. But enabling Mexican-Chinese drug mafias to murder mentally ill Americans with fentanyl, as they do everyday and did again a few hours ago in San Francisco, as the video below by @war24182236 shows, is barbaric and pathological,” Shellenberger wrote.
“I thus applaud Trump’s announcement that he will crack down on open air drug use and the government policies that encourage addiction. Harm reduction led to drug deaths rising from 20,000 in 2000 to over 100,000 in 2023. The federal government should have acted decades ago to stop the barbarism,” he continued.
“Seventy percent of Californians last November voted to crack down on fentanyl. Newsom opposed that measure (Prop 36) and is starving its implementation of resources, for the simple reason that he needs Soros money for his presidential run. Californians should support the federal government in, finally, doing the right thing on addiction and the drug death crisis,” he added.
“From the US to Europe to Asia, there is one and only one humane way to deal with ‘homelessness’ and it’s this, below. It’s wonderful to see it in this new Executive Order by @realDonaldTrump,” Shellenberger added.
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