Trump’s Executive Order Worsening Homelessness Crisis, Explained

On July 24, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that attacks people experiencing homelessness by forcing states to choose between using proven methods to address homelessness or receiving federal funding.  The EO radically reorients our country’s policy to address homelessness toward punitive approaches that prioritize jail, forced treatment and institutionalization over evidence-based approaches that provide housing and services. The EO:

• Prioritizes civil commitment and institutionalization of persons with disabilities living on the streets, paving the way to uproot core constitutional protections
• Prioritizes federal funding for localities that criminalize homelessness (specifically prohibiting camping, squatting, and loitering) and move people with mental health conditions and substance use disorders into institutions through use of civil commitment
• Redirects federal funds for use in encampment removal efforts by state and local governments
• Ends the federal government’s policy of Housing First (decades long evidence-based policy that prioritizes putting people into housing without barriers or preconditions) and instead requiring forced treatment programs as a condition of receiving HUD-funded homeless and housing assistance
• Authorizes HUD to allow or require recipients of homeless assistance federal funding to collect medical information and share it with law enforcement
• Ends funding for harm reduction programs proven to minimize negative health, social, and legal impacts for individuals struggling with substance use
• Directs the Department of Justice to terminate federal and state consent decrees that could limit the use of civil commitment. These agreements were often used to address long-term and systemic issues with local law enforcement especially involving the violation of rights of people with mental health issues

This EO attempts to undermine and upend core protections prohibiting arbitrary confinement of people with disabilities by funneling federal funds toward arresting and institutionalizing individuals experiencing homelessness. Instead of advancing solutions that address the rising rates of homelessness and skyrocketing costs of housing and homeownership, this EO promotes unlawful and out-of-date approaches that are rooted in anti-Black racism and bias against people with disabilities. Added to the recent gutting of resources for low-income communities in the Trump budget bill, this EO pushes people deeper into poverty and prioritizes dangerous and cruel stereotypes and actions against people experiencing homelessness.

The EO does nothing to address the housing crisis in our country. Instead, it further criminalizes individuals who do not have stable housing. Housing is not affordable or available for a large portion of our population.Today, half of all renters in the US pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent and utilities. The rise in the cost of living and the end of pandemic-era relief programs that kept people from losing their homes, such as eviction moratoriums and rent protections, has led to increased evictions because rent costs are unaffordable.

Local and state governments across the country, and especially in the Deep South, are already using the criminal justice system to punish people experiencing homelessness with fines, fees, and imprisonment for conduct necessary to survival—such as sleeping, camping, sitting or lying down, storing personal property, asking for help, or otherwise being physically present in public places. For example, since 2020, Alabama has passed several laws that criminalized both solicitation and loitering near public roadways, which SPLC successfully litigated.. In Louisiana, the city of Baton Rouge passed an ordinance that criminalized camping by homeless individuals in 2022, and New Orleans police have recently been sweeping homeless encampments.  In 2023, Georgia enacted a statewide law that forces cities to enforce bans on public camping. In 2025, the Mississippi legislature passed anti-solicitation and anti-camping bills. In 2025, Florida passed a statewide camping ban that prohibits cities and counties from allowing sleeping or camping on any public property. 

These criminalization measures have origins in vagrancy laws that were used to criminalize African Americans after the Civil War. They reinforce unfounded stereotypes about homelessness, addiction, and mental illness and exacerbate rather than alleviate the challenges of the homeless population. Homelessness is a driver of mass incarceration, filling county jails due to over-policing, pretrial detention, and repeated convictions for minor offenses. The disastrous Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, which allows governments to arrest or fine people for sleeping outside even if adequate shelter is not available, unleashed a wave of local and state laws that punish people without stable housing. This EO further incentivizes and empowers states to take draconian actions against people experiencing homelessness and people with disabilities.

SPLC and our partner organization are working to fight the laws criminalizing individuals experiencing homelessness. While this Administration and the current Supreme Court condone the arrest or ticketing of people for sleeping outside, even if adequate shelter is not available,  stakeholders can still take action to oppose punishing people experiencing homelessness and to advance solutions to homelessness. We can urge Members of Congress to support long-term solutions including funding for affordable housing and homelessness, building and preserving affordable housing, providing emergency rental assistance and housing stability services, and stopping the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness.