President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday making it easier for local jurisdictions to remove homeless people from the streets.
The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees” that limit jurisdictions’ abilities to relocate homeless people. It also redirects federal resources so that affected homeless people are transferred to rehabilitation and substance misuse facilities.
It also directs Bondi to work with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to fast-track federal funding to states and municipalities that crack down on “open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.”
On Friday, the president suggested the order marked a common-sense approach to the nation’s homelessness problem.
“Right outside, there were some tents, and they’re getting rid of them right now, you can’t do that — especially in Washington, DC. I talk to the mayor about it all the time, I said you gotta get rid of the tents,” Trump told a reporter on the White House South Lawn. “We can’t have it — when leaders come to see me to make a trade deal for billions and billions and even trillions of dollars, and they come in and there’s tents outside of the White House, we can’t have that. It doesn’t sound nice.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that the executive order was part of Trump’s commitment to “end homelessness across America.”
“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.
Advocates for the homeless condemned the executive orders with some saying that it will make homelessness worse for communities.
“These executive orders ignore decades of evidence-based housing and support services in practice. They represent a punitive approach that has consistently failed to resolve homelessness and instead exacerbates the challenges faced by vulnerable individuals,” said Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, in a press release.
The National Homelessness Law Center said the order “deprives people of their basic rights and makes it harder to solve homelessness” in a statement on Thursday. The group said the order will expand the use of police and institutionalization in response to homelessness, while increasing the number of people living in tents, cars and on the streets.
Order follows high court decision
The order comes a month after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an Oregon city that ticketed homeless people for sleeping outside. Justices rejected arguments that such “anti-camping” ordinances violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
The case had been watched closely by city and state officials who have struggled to respond to a surge in homelessness and encampments that have cropped up under bridges and in city parks across the nation.
It was also followed by people who live in those encampments and are alarmed by efforts to criminalize the population rather than build shelters and affordable housing.Homelessness in the US soared to the highest level on record last year, driven by a lack of affordable housing, a rise in migrants seeking shelter and natural disasters, which caused some people to be displaced from their homes, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
More than 770,000 people experienced homelessness in 2024, an 18% increase from 2023. It was the largest annual increase since HUD began collecting the data in 2007 (excluding the jump from 2021 to 2022, when the agency didn’t conduct a full count due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
As a candidate, Trump railed against the nation’s homeless crisis, telling supporters during a September campaign rally it was “destroying our cities.”
“The homeless encampments will be gone,” Trump said in remarks from North Carolina. “They’re going to be gone. Oh, you have to see, you have to – some of these encampments, what they’ve done to our cities, and we’ve got to take care of the people.”
This story has been updated with new developments.
CNN’s Shania Shelton contributed to this report.
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