Inconsistent residents respond to Trump’s crackdown on homelessness
President Donald Trump’s homeless camp in Washington, D.C. and crackdowns on promoting fear and anger.
When President Donald Trump tries to forcefully eliminate homeless people from Washington, D.C., one think tank warns that policies that crime or punish people to sleep outside are not just cruel and ineffective.
Trump plans to take control of Washington’s metropolitan police station and wipe homeless people out of city streets, he said at an August 11 press conference.
These procedures go against evidence that these procedures could exacerbate the issue, according to an August 6 report by Mari Castaldi, director of state housing policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington-based think tank outside of Washington, which often describes as a left-wing trend.
The report says that when people are excluded from the public space they live in, they lose their personal property, have traumatic encounters with law enforcement, criminal records and fines, and make it difficult to acquire jobs and rental housing.
“Communities that implement these practices actively prevent people from escaping homelessness and do not resolve the country’s homeless crisis, thus worsening and not solving,” Castaldi wrote.
Homelessness can lead to prisons in many states and cities
“At least eight states have passed since 2022, and dozens more have been considering it. This is a ticket, fine or prison law simply because you don’t have a safe sleep,” Castaldi wrote.
Additionally, the Supreme Court Grant Pass v. Johnson decision has introduced more than 320 local ordinances to fine or arrest people for sleeping outside since it determined it could be considered a crime, the report says. On July 24, Trump signed an executive order, making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets.
Homelessness will decline if rental assistance and similar services are well funded, the report cites such policy experiments in veterans across Chattanooga, Tennessee, Los Angeles, and nationwide.
The CBPP report is one of several that criticizes policies defended by the Cicero Institute, a think tank that describes it as nonpartisan. Cicero was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, who helped Trump’s presidential election in 2024.
Cicero argues that policies approved by the CBPP are “unacceptable.” “Instead, states should pursue sanctioned encampments using minimal viable shelter options and services. Permanent supportive housing will not address homelessness. It will create more homeless demand and support chronism.”
The group also believes that such policies do not provide a path to self-sufficiency, but rather lock the homeless away where they are. “That’s why homelessness has been rising over the past 20 years despite increased spending,” Cicero said.
CBPP and other groups are seeing an increase in homelessness due to their failure to respond to the affordable housing crisis.
“Homelessness is resolved,” says Castaldi. “The path forward is not to punish people for struggling under a flawed system, but to prioritize support to end homelessness and prevent it from happening in the first place.”
