Trump’s Executive Order Criminalizing Homelessness Threatens to Worsen Crisis, Experts Warn

In a stark reversal of two decades of housing policy, the Trump administration’s Executive Order 14321, issued in July 2025, seeks to address the nation’s homelessness crisis by criminalizing unsheltered individuals and mandating involuntary treatment for mental illness and substance use disorders. But experts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) are sounding the alarm, calling the order a dangerous misdiagnosis of the problem that threatens to deepen the crisis.

Dennis Culhane, LDI Senior Fellow and professor at Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice, points out that the visible homeless population living on the streets is actually a small and unrepresentative fraction of the broader homeless community. “This policy conflates homelessness with a behavioral health problem,” Culhane said. “It’s as if the federal government were focusing on the 300 to 400 unhoused people in Kensington, thinking that moving them is going to somehow address the 15,000 people who come into Philadelphia’s homeless system a year.”

The core driver of homelessness, Culhane and other LDI experts emphasize, is the lack of affordable housing. Studies consistently show that housing affordability and unemployment rates are the primary predictors of homelessness rates in cities and counties. Since 2000, federal housing policy has largely embraced a “Housing First” approach, which prioritizes providing stable housing without preconditions such as sobriety or mandatory treatment. This approach, officially adopted under President Obama’s 2009 HEARTH Act, has been shown to keep about 85% of participants housed two years after placement.

Despite its success, Housing First programs have not been scaled sufficiently. In 2023, only 16% of households in shelters transitioned to permanent housing, leaving the vast majority reliant on temporary solutions. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ version of Housing First, designed by Culhane, has been far more successful, cutting veteran homelessness by 55% since 2009 by integrating supportive housing with health services.

Yet the Trump administration’s new order threatens to upend this progress. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s recent funding notice would cap spending on permanent housing at 30% of grants, shifting half of the current housing funds toward treatment programs. Culhane warns this would leave nearly 200,000 formerly homeless tenants and their housing providers stranded.

A federal appeals court has already struck down this policy, decrying it as a “slapdash imposition of political whims.” HUD’s statement criticized the “misguided ‘Housing First’ approach,” accusing it of fostering a “self-serving homeless industrial complex” and rewarding activists rather than delivering solutions. But the administration has not proposed changes to the VA’s successful housing programs for veterans, highlighting a selective approach to policy reform.

Critics of Housing First often target its acceptance of non-sober tenants, reflecting a broader retreat from harm reduction strategies. But LDI experts caution that criminalizing homelessness and mandating treatment ignore the structural realities driving the crisis. As Vincent Reina, LDI Senior Fellow and housing expert, notes, homelessness has increased alongside a growing share of unsheltered individuals, making punitive measures both ineffective and inhumane.

The Trump administration’s order represents a troubling shift toward authoritarian overreach, criminalizing poverty and homelessness rather than addressing the systemic failures that cause it. Without robust investment in affordable housing and supportive services, this policy risks exacerbating suffering and undermining decades of progress in combating homelessness.