On Friday July 24, Trump signed an Executive Order to make it easier to remove people from the streets. This executive order follows a trend of draconian measures enacted by the Trump administration that targets the country’s most vulnerable communities. This Executive Order doesn’t solve homelessness, it criminalizes it. It scapegoats people in crisis, ignores decades of data, and wastes taxpayer dollars on failed, punitive approaches.
Through this plan the Trump administration seeks to criminalize homelessness through increased encampment sweeps, through the forced institutionalization of people struggling with substance use disorders and mental health issues, and by defunding harm reduction programs. These tried and failed tactics do not address the root causes of homelessness— which include rising rents, lack of affordable housing, poverty wages and the gutting of life saving and essential social aid programs.
Unfortunately, these same tactics are being employed here in San Francisco, in which our city officials are stigmatizing and criminalizing drug users for their own political gain, advocating for criminalization and discrediting the evidence based models of “Housing First” and harm reduction, and barring certain street based harm reduction supply distributions.
For over thirty years, San Francisco has employed data driven approaches to address the overdose crisis, which includes implementing harm reduction as a pillar in the continuum of care for people with substance use disorders. While we acknowledge the urgency for individuals to receive the treatment that they desire and need, we cannot achieve this through coercion, forced institutionalization and through an abstinence only framework that strips people of their housing. City leaders in San Francisco shifting away from these evidence based practices, marks an unprecedented shift towards Trump-like authoritarian control over people’s rights and autonomy.
The Coalition on Homelessness will continue to work alongside the community towards achieving housing justice and in uplifting the voices of those displaced and criminalized through sweeps. We are committed to preserving harm reduction and in destigmatizing those experiencing substance use disorders. We continue to urge our city officials to work alongside the homeless community to reach permanent solutions to end homelessness. We remain steadfast in upholding the human rights of unhoused people in San Francisco and across the nation.
Conflating Homelessness with Criminality Is Dangerous, Dehumanizing, and Deliberate
The EO overtly conflates poverty and disability with crime. It frames people experiencing homelessness as threats, referring to “vagrant criminals,” “urban squatters,” and links them with sex offenders and open drug use. This reckless equation is not subtle; it’s scapegoating. Instead of distinguishing between structural causes and individual circumstances, this EO collapses them into one, pathologizing one’s poverty and trauma as criminal tendencies. The result is a policy built not on compassion or data but stigma and fear.
Criminalization Makes Homelessness Worse & We’ve Known This for Years
Study after study shows that punishing people for being unhoused increases instability, making it harder to find work, access benefits, or secure permanent housing. Arrest records and fines compound barriers, not resolve them. Yet, this Administration doubles down on failed tactics that sound tough but sabotage real solutions.
Criminalization Is the Most Expensive and Least Effective Response
Beyond being cruel and counterproductive, criminalizing homelessness is fiscally irresponsible. Cities spend millions cycling people through jails and courts when those funds could be used for permanent supportive housing, a proven, cost-effective intervention that reduces chronic homelessness and public spending. Cycling first responders, hospitalization, and jail beds not only does not end someone’s homelessness, but it also costs more than providing someone with housing. We are literally paying more to make the problem worse.
Criminalization exacerbates homelessness by levying fees unhouse people can’t pay, destroying their credit, and lead to arrest warrants. Many federal housing programs remove people from their waitlists if they have active warrants, and landlords often do not rent to people with bad credit scores.
Forced Treatment Violates Rights and Fails in Practice
The EO also calls for coercive mental health and substance use interventions, but forced treatment is both ineffective and frequently unlawful. The Administration vaguely references the “redirection” of resources to forced institutionalization, but heavy investment in forced treatment and institutionalization diverts resources away from proven solutions like supportive housing, harm reduction, and voluntary community-based care. Consent isn’t just a legal formality; it’s essential for treatment to work. Coercion and forced hospitalization can even exacerbate trauma, increase feelings of powerlessness, and worsen mental health symptoms. The so-called “rescue” is little more than punishment disguised as care. Yet again, the Trump Administration seems more interested in punishing and hiding poverty than actually improving public health.
