City and state officials will now have more power to forcibly hospitalize homeless people experiencing mental illness or addiction, thanks to a new executive order.
The order, which President Trump signed Thursday afternoon, advises local and state officials to forcibly commit individuals to long-term treatment facilities if they “pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.” The president wrote that doing so will “restore public order.”
“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” the order reads in part.
However, experts say Trump’s strategy of forcing people into mental health facilities won’t do much to quell the country’s unhoused crisis.
In a Thursday press release, the National Homelessness Law Center warned Trump’s order was “rooted in outdated, racist myths” and “deprives people of their basic rights.”
“Instead of helping people who are struggling to make ends meet, Donald Trump remains focused on backwards, expensive, and ineffective policies that make homelessness worse,” the statement read in part.
“Today’s executive orders, combined with MAGA’s budget cuts for housing and healthcare, will increase the number of people forced to live in tents, in their cars, and on the streets.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless credits two main causes for the national crisis: a lack of affordable housing nationwide and a lack of government-funded housing assistance programs.
Trump’s order does not address those issues. However, it does instruct the Department of Housing and Urban Development to place more stringent rules for federal housing and homelessness assistance programs, requiring that individuals with mental illnesses or addiction issues actively participate in treatment programs to receive aid.
While Trump has often derided Democratic cities for their handling of the housing crisis, his latest executive order seems to take a page from their book.
Both California and New York have implemented similar laws in recent years, expanding the power of law enforcement officials to forcibly institutionalize people experiencing homelessness.
The order also comes after the Supreme Court ruled last year that it is legal for city governments to enact anti-camping laws that ban unhoused people from sleeping outside.
Trump’s order also instructs the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to strip funding from harm reduction programs, which aim to minimize some negative outcomes from addiction by promoting safer drug use and providing legal aid.
Such efforts “only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm,” wrote the president.
Thursday’s executive order is a move Trump often discussed on the campaign trail while expressing his desire to forcibly remove homeless populations from the streets of major cities. Instead, Trump has said he plans to cordon off homeless people in “tent cities” on “inexpensive land.”
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