Executive Order to Combat Street Homelessness Calls for Expanding Involuntary Treatment and Institutionalization

Additional authors include Yngvild Olsen and Nikitha Reddy

Overview

On July 24, President Trump issued an executive order (EO), , and accompanying directing federal agencies to support broad enforcement actions against homelessness, with a focus on institutionalizing individuals experiencing homelessness who have mental illness or substance use disorders (SUDs). This EO comes as homelessness has reached record levels across the nation with over 770,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2024—a reported 18 percent increase from the previous year. The EO marks a departure from longstanding, bipartisan support for “housing first” policies, instead prioritizing funding for programs that condition housing on sobriety and behavioral health treatment participation. The EO also seeks to incentivize jurisdictions to enact and enforce bans on public camping, drug use, loitering, and squatting.

The EO establishes as U.S. policy that individuals who are “a risk to themselves or others” or “cannot care for themselves” may be removed from public spaces and placed in treatment centers or long-term institutional settings, including through involuntary civil commitment. It charges Attorney General Pam Bondi with seeking to reverse judicial precedents and terminate consent decrees that place limits on involuntary institutionalization based on civil rights. It contains multiple provisions related to commitment and tracking of sex offenders.

The EO directs the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other federal agencies to disincentivize or redirect funding away from states and jurisdictions that promote harm reduction programs, offer housing regardless of whether an individual seeks treatment for identified behavioral health conditions (i.e., housing first programs), and that do not criminalize public camping and unsheltered homelessness.

The EO stakes out the Trump Administration’s position on some of the most controversial and complex domestic issues of the day, departing dramatically from established approaches to addressing homelessness, minimizing long-term institutionalization of individuals, and preventing death and disease through harm reduction strategies. As such, it already has generated significant controversy among national organizations such as the and the which have critiqued it for failing to follow evidence-based practices and for further stigmatizing people with mental illness and SUDs.

The EO is not self-executing and does not require states, localities, or other organizations to take action unless and until federal agencies issue guidance or amend grant programs to effectuate the directives in the EO.

Rejecting Housing First and Harm Reduction Approaches

The EO directs the Attorney General to review housing grants, determine whether recipients are in violation of federal law, and bring civil or criminal actions against grant recipients who allow “safe consumption” or permit the use or distribution of “illicit drugs on property under their control.” Though it does not explicitly ban housing first or harm reduction programs, the EO discourages these programs by diverting federal funding away from them and subjecting them to heightened scrutiny. The EO does not specifically state which grants or programs could be at risk, nor does it provide alternatives to addressing homelessness or behavioral health needs beyond institutionalization.

Re-institutionalization and Olmstead

The EO implicitly challenges the core tenets of the landmark 1999 Olmstead decision which aims to ensure that those who can be served in community-based services are able to since institutional placement can lead to isolation and “severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals” in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It directs HHS to support placing people experiencing homelessness into long-term care institutional settings, including providing assistance to states and local governments who adopt and implement “maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment.” The EO also explicitly directs the Attorney General to terminate consent decrees despite decades of impactful court cases and state and federal policy that enforce the Olmstead decision.

Urban Camping Decision

The EO also calls for HUD and the Department of Transportation to identify ways to reward communities with federal funding that enact or strengthen local laws that penalize public camping or squatting. It directs the Attorney General to provide federal funds to states and local governments that support encampment removal efforts.

This provision comes on the heels of last year’s Supreme Court in City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson, in which the court ruled that a city’s ordinance that criminalized public camping did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The Grants Pass ruling has emboldened many local jurisdictions to enact or strengthen bans on public camping and sleeping, and the EO’s provision will likely contribute to more cities enacting such bans.

Looking Ahead

Through the EO, the Trump Administration stakes out new U.S. policy to address the growing homelessness crisis by redirecting federal funds from programs consistent with decades of policies to , involuntary commitment. By restricting federal funds and incentivizing states and local governments to support involuntary commitments, the Administration is rejecting decades of research and legal precedent establishing the right to receive community-based services for those who are able. For now, nearly all of the EO’s provisions require further action by federal agencies to achieve effect. States, local governments, and other entities operating federally funded housing programs may not be compelled to take any concrete steps to modify or end programs until federal agencies take action to implement the EO by, for example, issuing guidance or amending grant agreements. When federal agencies act on the EO’s directives, availability of community-based services will decrease, even as the rates of homelessness and behavioral health disorders increase.

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. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development. December 2024.

Per the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, is a “proven approach, applicable across all elements of systems for ending homelessness, in which people experiencing homelessness are connected to permanent housing swiftly and with few to no treatment preconditions, behavioral contingencies, or other barriers.”

According to a 2025 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service’s Administration on Overdose Prevention and Response, harm reduction is “an evidence-based approach that is critical to engaging with people who use drugs and equipping them with life-saving tools and information to create positive change in their lives and potentially save their lives.”