{"id":158230,"date":"2025-07-25T03:49:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T03:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-order-pushes-local-officials-to-clear-unhoused-people-from-streets-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T03:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T03:49:58","slug":"trump-order-pushes-local-officials-to-clear-unhoused-people-from-streets-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-order-pushes-local-officials-to-clear-unhoused-people-from-streets-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump order pushes local officials to clear unhoused people from streets &#8211; The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Order removes restrictions from municipalities and redirects funds toward rehabilitation and treatment<br \/>The federal government is seeking to crack down on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/homelessness\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">homelessness<\/a> in the US, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/donaldtrump\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Donald Trump<\/a> issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.<br \/>The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the \u201creversal of federal or state judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees\u201d that restrict local governments\u2019 ability to force people into treatment for mental health, and redirect funds to support rehabilitation and treatment. The order aims to \u201crestore public order\u201d, saying \u201cendemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe\u201d, according to the order.<br \/>The action comes as the homelessness crisis in the US has significantly worsened in recent years driven by a widespread shortage of affordable housing. Last year, a single-day count, which is a rough estimate, recorded more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness across the country, the highest figure ever documented.<br \/>Cities and states have adopted an increasingly punitive approach to homelessness, seeking to push people out of parks and city streets, even when there is no shelter available. The supreme court ruled last year that cities can impose fines and even jail time for unhoused people for sleeping outside after local governments argued some protections for unhoused people prevented them from taking action to reduce homelessness.<br \/>Trump\u2019s action seeks to move unhoused people to \u201clong-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment\u201d, according to the order.<br \/>Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2025\/07\/24\/trump-homeless-people-streets-order-housing\/85358060007\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">USA Today,<\/a> which first reported on the executive order, that the president was \u201cdelivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again\u201d and end homelessness.<br \/>\u201cBy removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/trump-administration\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Trump administration<\/a> 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,\u201d she said.<br \/>The National <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/homelessness\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Homelessness<\/a> Law Center condemned the order, which it said \u201cdeprives people of their basic rights\u201d and would ultimately worsen the problem.<br \/>\u201cToday\u2019s executive orders, combined with Maga\u2019s budget cuts for housing and healthcare, will increase the number of people forced to live in tents, in their cars, and on the streets. This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet,\u201d said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center.<br \/>The president\u2019s order comes after last year\u2019s US supreme court ruling, which was one of the most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/article\/2024\/jun\/29\/law-professor-homeless-rights-supreme-court-ruling\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">consequential legal decisions<\/a> on homelessness in decades in the US.<br \/>That ruling held that it is not \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d to criminalize camping when there is no shelter available. The case originated in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city that was defending its efforts to prosecute people for sleeping in public.<br \/>Unhoused people in the US have long faced crackdowns and sweeps, with policies and police practices that result in law enforcement harassment, tickets or jail time. But the ruling supercharged those kinds of aggressive responses, emboldening cities and states to punish encampment residents who have no other options for shelter.<br \/>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/one-year-since-grants-pass-tracking-the-criminalization-of-homelessness\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">report<\/a> last month, the American Civil Liberties Union found that cities across the US have introduced more than 320 bills criminalizing unhoused people, the majority of which have passed. The crackdowns have taken place in Democratic- and Republican-run states alike.<br \/>Advocates for unhoused people\u2019s rights have long argued that criminalization only exacerbates the housing crisis, shuffling people in and out of jail or from one neighborhood to the next, as they lose their belongings and connections to providers, fall further into debt and wind up in increasingly unsafe conditions.<br \/>During his campaign last year, Trump used dark rhetoric to talk about the humanitarian crisis, threatening to force people into \u201ctent cities\u201d, raising fears that some of the poorest, most vulnerable Americans could end up in remote locations in settings that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/article\/2024\/jun\/29\/law-professor-homeless-rights-supreme-court-ruling\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">resemble concentration camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMiigFBVV95cUxOckI4OUJheUxsakNoX05zSTZDUzRsbU5Na01lRU9LbTlidk5tSTFZMVhDVll5Y3dyaEZQYWk3dmt5dmlsM0VVS1NtckFiSUtkbEszMkI4bEdieGRpU1dOWkFsajNrSlZuYzFTNEhhMmZXeE1Da1RNak8zWmtrWlhNWkdyalJPZDFKY1E?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Order removes restrictions from municipalities and redirects funds toward rehabilitation and treatmentThe federal government is seeking to crack down on homelessness in the US, with Donald Trump issuing an executive order to push local governments to remove unhoused people from the streets.The order the US president signed on Thursday will seek the \u201creversal of federal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":158231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}