Locking Up The Homeless
A simple solution to a complex problem.
WaPo (“Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people“):
President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to find ways to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction for longer periods — an effort to fight what the administration calls “vagrancy” threatening the streets of U.S. cities.
An executive order signed Thursday pushes federal agencies to overturn state and federal legal precedent that limits how local and state governments can involuntarily commit people who pose a risk to themselves or others.
The order said shifting homeless people into long-term institutional settings will restore public order. “Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens,” Trump’s order said.
The impact of Trump’s executive order remains unclear because states set laws and handle the process of involuntary commitments. Critics warned that such a policy threatens returning the nation to a darker era when people were often unjustly locked away in mental health institutions, and does nothing to help people afford housing.
“The safest communities are those with the most housing and resources, not those that make it a crime to be poor or sick,” Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director of the National Homelessness Law Center, said in a statement. He called forced treatment unethical and ineffective.
NPR (“Trump signs an executive order to make it easier to remove homeless people from streets“):
Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Trump has signed an executive order that seeks to overhaul the way the U.S. manages homelessness.
The order signed Thursday calls for changes to make it easier for states and cities to remove outdoor encampments and get people into mental health or addiction treatment. That includes involuntary civil commitment for those “who are a risk to themselves or others.”
[…]
The White House action also seeks to shift federal funding away from longtime policies that sought to get homeless people into housing first, and then offer treatment. Instead, it calls for prioritizing money for programs that require sobriety and treatment, and for cities that enforce homeless camping bans.
It also directs the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation to assess federal grant programs and prioritize places that actively crack down on illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
Critics said the sweeping action does nothing to solve homelessness, and could make it worse.
“This executive order is forcing people to choose between compassionate data driven approaches like housing, or treating it like a crime to have a mental illness or be homeless,” said Jesse Rabinowitz with the National Homelessness Law Center.
“Institutionalizing people with mental illness, including those experiencing homelessness, is not a dignified, safe, or evidence-based way to serve people’s needs,” Ann Oliva with the National Alliance to End Homelessness said in a statement.
Trump’s order also calls on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to defund addiction programs that include “harm reduction.” This is certain to disrupt frontline health care programs that work to reduce overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs.
Addiction experts consider harm reduction, including programs that provide clean needles and other paraphernalia, to be an essential part of helping people survive addiction. Trump’s order repeats the claim that such programs encourage drug use, an argument disproven by years of research, including by federal scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thursday’s White House action builds on a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year that said cities can punish people for sleeping outside even if they have nowhere else to go. Since the high court ruling, well over 100 cities across more than two dozen states have passed or strengthened bans on homeless camping. More may now feel pressure to do so if that makes it easier to get federal funding.
That the current approach to homelessness has failed is self-evident. Even mayors of left-leaning cities are conducting sweeps to end encampments in parks, bolstered by a recent Supreme Court decision.
There are clearly a considerable number of the homeless population who need professional help. But this doesn’t seem to be the primary intent:
Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens. My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.
Given that there has been no appropriation for any of this, one suspects that this amounts to warehousing—quite probably on a permanent basis—rather than treatment.
As with illegal immigration, there’s widespread agreement that something needs to be done. But actual policy solutions turn out to be either so wildly expensive as to be impractical or so cruel as to be unconscionable.
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It wasn’t that long ago that the denizens of Wingnuttia had a fit because Obama dared to issue an executive order, howling that a president couldn’t (not SHOULDN’T) “rule by executive orders.” Now there is silence as Trump bypasses Congress (and ignores the judicial branch) and dishes out executive orders by the boatload on any and all topics. That said orders are unfunded, unconstitutional, or just plain stupid doesn’t matter. How long before he issues an executive order forbidding the media to mention the words Jeffrey and Epstein?
“A simple[ton’s] solution to a complex problem.”
Fixed that tag line for ya.
Frankly, that tag line works for nearly every Trump administration “policy” or “position”.
If he had any interest in addressing homelessness, rather than grandstanding, he’d propose a plan to build more housing. Since federal funds are his favorite cudgel, how about withholding funds from states that don’t achieve low income housing goals and sweeping away NIMBY objections.
Although it is pretty apparent that Trump (and MAGA’s goal) is to get the homeless out of sight and out of mind, it is also apparent that the mental and substance abuse issues of many of the homeless have to be dealt with. This means there has to be some sort of government custodianship of people. Probably including specialized courts, like drug courts. And, of course, money.
Labeling this a failed “approach” gives too much credit to what has, in practice, been a fragmented, reactive, and contradictory series of decades-long clusterfucks.
More generally, it’s so damn frustrating to defund programs that use evidence based practices like housing first and harm reduction.
Are these practices perfect? Or even highly effective? Hell no, for the most part, they kinda suck.
But that’s not the key question. The key question is: How effective are they compared to the alternatives?
But then that brings us to something that James hints at when he refers to “primary intent”: What is the outcome that policy x seeks to achieve?
If I were in charge, I’d organize a “homelessness moonshot” that included a coordinated series of pragmatic RCTs around the country.
The outcome variables would be the same for all of the trials, agreed upon by the key shareholders (eg, researchers, clinicians, lived experience experts, policy makers, community members).
The interventions would differ based on the priorities, needs, and resources of each community site.
We can actually make a big dent in this problem. If we wanted to.
Here’s my detailed plan. OK, not mine, but I did ask the Google AI for the solution to homelessness.
The basic problem is everyone wants a solution that works 100%, doesn’t inconvenience anyone, and costs nothing (or at least very little), and are wiling to let the problem fester for decades while this fantasy gets fulfilled.
This may come off as snark, but I seriously believe Trump envisions mental hospitals like the one shown for his favorite movie character in Silence of the Lambs.
Or maybe one motive is to get the public used to the arrest and imprisonment —including no due process, horrific treatment, etc. etc. — of more groups? Now unambiguously targeting Americans?
Historically, the federal government didn’t do the warehousing, the individual states did. Since, as you say, there is no funding, a relevant question is what threats the federal government will use to get the states to comply. There are multiple federal requirements on state spending already where the punishment for non-compliance goes as high as “loss of all Medicaid reimbursements for each quarter of non-compliance.” Where those requirements are in place, all states (including the reddest of them) go to great pains to comply.
When Roberts wrote the first SCOTUS decision that the PPACA was largely constitutional, the part he tossed was the threat of loss of all Medicaid money for states who didn’t adopt the expansion. At the time, he said that the threatened punishment was so onerous that the states didn’t have any real choice about participating. So far, the Court has not applied that theory to any other laws or regulations, even though there are numerous cases where (in my non-lawyer opinion) it should apply.
None of this gets solved without spending money. Where is that going to come from–especially with a near- $1 trillion cut in Medicaid? Not to mention that this will reduce available hospital beds, at the same time rural hospitals will be closing and shifting those patients to available beds.
These are deeply unserious people making ridiculous, unhelpful policy through EO fiat.
@Jen:
Kudos, Jen! The perfect summation in a dozen words.
I remember when back around 1981-82 Reagan emptied psychiatric failities and thousands of people with various levels of mental disorder were ‘suddenly’ on the streets in cities across the country. I was living in Seattle at the time, and the corridor from Pike Place Market down to Pioneer Square had a new growing class of homeless people. We haven’t really figured out what to do about this since then.
Finally: Am I being too cynical by thinking that what Trump, Noem, Homan, and Miller have in mind are ‘Homeless Service Facilities’ in South Sudan, El Salvador, and Eritrea?
Mr. Trump is mindful of not just maintaining but extending America’s position. Right now, we’re number one in incarceration rates in the world. These actions will put our lead out of sight.
Involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill will certainly be cost effective. Obviously, walking about with anti Trump picket signs is a sure sign of mental illness.
@Jen and Charley in Cleveland:
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@Michael Cain: Trump is not satisfied with being president of the United States. He also wants to be the governor of every state and the mayor of every city. This is another “why don’t they just . . .” solution to complex problem that serious people have been trying to address for decades. He needs to Get. Back. In. His. Lane.
@Michael Reynolds: Try asking ChatGPT “How would an authoritarian end homelessness” I think that summary is more in line with what the current administration is using to generate its 1st draft AI executive orders.
I seem to recall that the Reagan Administration cut funding so as to put many, many mentally ill people out on the streets, thus creating the homeless problem. Do I have that right? Is this still the nature of things? Or is it now more complicated? I would think that in California, for instance, a bipolar man (ahem, I know one) on the streets should be able to get meds. But he might have trouble making rent, or might just decide that squatting is preferable.
I really know almost nothing about this problem. Even so, I feel I know more than Trump does.
@Joe: With tongue only partly in cheek, I maintain that Trump’s actions (and those of his closest minions) make more sense if the goal, conscious or not, is “Donald, the First of His Name, Lord High Emperor of North America”. And he’s perfectly willing to coexist with Emperors Putin, Xi, and Modi.
@Kathy:
Whenever I discuss homelessness with people, eventually they fall back to “Just arrest them all” to which I respond, ” I wish a mutha-effer would!”
Because incarceration is the single most expensive solution; A single nights stay in jail is around $1000, and that doesn’t count the cost of the jail itself.
There is no solution that doesn’t involve building buildings, a lot of them, and hiring people to manage them once they are built, and hiring yet more people to provide health care to the people being housed all of which will cost a gajillion dollars.
And this doesn’t change if you call them “houses” or “prisons”!
@ChipD:
There are many people who would favor spending a lot if the “solution” is punitive.
When poverty is seen as a moral failing, the idea of punishing the poor begins to make sense.
@ChipD:
That’s what it comes down to. Would you rather spend resources on building prisons or apartment buildings? The third alternative is to just ignore the problem, which is the current plan, and since it’s the cheapest way I imagine this will be where things go.
Democrats have made a lot of political trouble for themselves, tarnished the brand, by not finding a way to deal with it in Blue cities. If you can’t find a way to build apartments buildings you are not exactly signaling competence to the wider polity.
@Michael Reynolds: As a San Diegan, I can assure you that the problem with localized solutions is that the more effective they are, the more homeless folks migrate to the cities where they can receive services. City borders are not a closed loop. Warm-weather cities in blue states are almost predestined to be Meccas for homeless Americans who can find a way to afford a bus ticket.
Short of restricting travel between states – or even city borders, we require a federal program.
Arnold Kling has written about the 3 languages of politics and how it makes for entrenched and unproductive discussions about pressing social issues.
Conservatives use the language of civilization vs. barbarism. Liberals use the language of oppressor vs. oppressed. Libertarians use the language of freedom vs. coercion.
This debate over homelessness policy is a vivid example of that dynamic. We all insist on using our preferred language to frame the issue. Hence, the issue persists.
@Tony W:
Excellent point.
That’s good, I needed another thing to feel hopeless about.
@Jay L. Gischer: You’re right, that’s one major cause. If you boot mentally ill people out of public facilities, where are they going to go?
There are other factors. For example, homelessness in Portland, OR increased because of the feud between the mayor and the police after the BLM protests. I visited there once, and there were no police in sight. I’m not for rounding up people just because they’re homeless, but there were a couple of scary incidents involving the unhoused who clearly had mental health issues. If the police aren’t going to help steer the homeless to care, or ensure that they’re not a danger to themselves or others, who will?
There are also the laws that make it very difficult for the families of adults with mental health issues, which often drive them into homelessness, to do anything that the person in question doesn’t want to do. These laws differ by state, but in many cases, even if a person is clearly suffering a very serious mental problem, up to and including significant, conspicuous delusions, there’s nothing that anyone can do unless the afflicted consents.
@Michael Reynolds:
Empirical data from thousands of elections and referenda show that the public’s revealed preferences are, in order:
1. “Mow the grass”- i.e., shuffle homeless people from this corner to that, then back again;
2. Prisons
3. Apartments
What is little discussed is that #3 is actually the cheapest, by far.
Most people never calculate the cost of inaction, but it is staggering. In every major city there is a stock of real estate that is forced to reduce rents due to the unpleasantness of homeless people;
And cities spend astonishing amounts of money on the ill effects- EMTs for homeless people suffering medical crises, low level disorder crimes from the mentally ill, etc.
All that money, pissed away, forever and ever endlessly. If I said the costs would amount to building every single homeless person a brand new two bedroom single family home, it might be an exaggeration, but not by much.
Not building housing where it is needed and just hoping for the best? Yeah, that failed.
Anyway, who will be doing independent monitoring of the commitment centers for the homeless to make sure they are not actually concentration camps?
@Gustopher:
I’m reminded of this scene on the Simpsons depicting Ned’s parents: We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.
The first step in addressing the homeless crisis has to be preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place — being homeless is an enormous stress that makes other problems much more likely and much worse and much harder to deal with.
Build housing, take care of our entire healthcare/medical-debt industry, increase unemployment insurance payments and duration (I would increase duration based on local unemployment rates), and maybe even jobs programs (a nice WPA — they can build giant statues of Trump or something and ship them all to Wyoming, where they can have the Forest of Trumps), and an emergency loan program (sometimes people need to get out of situations before they become dangerous), shelters that take families and pets.
The fewer people that end up on the street, the fewer really hard problems we have. Those people? I have no idea what works to get them off the streets and independent, we mostly just try to keep them alive right now.
@Gustopher: You are so correct. Most people who become homeless involuntarily report they knew that it was coming. For very many, homelessness could have been prevented with a timely gift/grant of $500 — $1,000 with which to fix the car or pay for the meds. A huge missed opportunity, not researching ways to distribute such assistance.
Basically every Republican policy since world war 2 is summarized by:
These were not very bright people, and things got out of hand.
On the positive side, however, this move would solve the looming crisis in the for-profit incarceration industry caused by the unfortunate decline in the number of imprisoned criminals.
I’ve been spending some time in Europe, mostly Portugal, and hope to return soon on a more or less year-round basis. The minimum wage in Portugal is 820 Euros a month, per capita GDP a third of ours. It’s a poor country by western standards, but I don’t see tent cities under the freeways or in city parks. The weather is lovely, perfect for camping out, and yet if there are homeless they are well-hidden.
Why is a rich country like the US, and rich cities in that rich country like San Francisco, incapable of managing homelessness as well as poor Portugal does? There’s something about the way we are as a people that causes this. There’s something wrong with our values.