On July 24, 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets” that reorients federal homelessness policy toward involuntary civil commitment and the criminalization of living outdoors. The order directs federal agencies to prioritize funding for states that pursue “maximally flexible civil commitment” of people with mental illness who, in its words, “pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves,” and it calls on the Justice Department to seek the reversal of judicial precedents and consent decrees that limit such commitments.
The order also steers money toward jurisdictions that ban urban camping, squatting, and open drug use. NPR reported it obtained slides describing a proposed Department of Veterans Affairs plan called “Safe Harbor” that would fold homeless veterans into the same shift toward involuntary treatment.
A year later, the funding machinery is visibly moving. CBS News reported on July 29, 2026 that the Department of Housing and Urban Development cut permanent supportive housing funding from about $3 billion to $2.4 billion compared with 2024, while shifting roughly $1.3 billion toward transitional and temporary housing, up from about $218 million in 2024. Utah, Indiana, and Louisiana have passed new civil commitment and camping-ban laws, and lawsuits challenging HUD's funding shifts remain pending.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner defended the approach, saying, “No one is being kicked out on the streets.” Housing experts disagreed with the premise. Ann Oliva, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the administration was defunding the one intervention with the strongest evidence base: “It's like they're saying the emergency room is causing cancer.” Jennifer Mathis, deputy director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said the underlying logic “seems to be that these people ... don't deserve housing.”
The order marks a federal turn away from the “housing first” model, which prioritizes stable housing before treatment, toward a model that uses federal dollars to reward states for coercion and institutionalization (see Trump Says Reps. Omar and Tlaib Are 'LUNATICS' Who 'Look Like They Should Be Institutionalized,' Then Says 'Send Them Back' and Trump's Executive Order to House 6,000 Homeless Veterans in LA Got Zero Dollars in His Own VA Budget Request).
Update (September 17, 2026): on August 7, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island vacated HUD's 2026 Continuum of Care funding notice, finding the department skipped required notice-and-comment procedures. On September 16, a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, including two Democratic appointees, stayed that ruling while the appeal proceeds, letting HUD move forward with setting aside $1.3 billion of the program for transitional housing and supportive services, Reuters reported. The panel said HUD “would suffer irreparable injury absent a stay, given that HUD only has until December 1, 2026 to make awards.” The plaintiffs, about two dozen mostly Democratic-led states and advocacy groups, said the change “threatens to push 100,000 Americans into homelessness.”