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homelessness
Mamdani Announces Plan to Build 200K New Affordable Homes
"We are the largest city in the nation," the mayor said of the bold new proposal. "We have the resources, the talent, and the will to achieve this."
May 26, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his long-anticipated plan on Tuesday that he said will confront the city's housing crisis "with the urgency it demands," setting out the goal of building and preserving 400,000 affordable housing units.
Aimed at driving down housing costs in one of the nation's most expensive rental markets, the mayor described his program—titled "Block by Block: The Housing Plan For A New Era"—as one that will set about meeting "two of the most ambitious housing targets in modern New York City," during a press conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
Using a $22 billion capital investment over the next five years, the city is set to build 200,000 new affordable and rent-stabilized homes while preserving and stabilizing another 200,000 over the next decade.
According to a press release from the mayor's office, the large investment—which makes up about a sixth of the mayor's five-year capital plan—will be paired "with an ambitious land use agenda to boost housing production across the five boroughs and innovative new financing tools to build and preserve affordable housing more quickly and efficiently."
It will also include modifications to the zoning code to create hundreds of housing co-ops.
Mamdani said on Tuesday that the construction and maintenance of these units would increase the number of homes available to New Yorkers facing homelessness by 45%.
"We are the largest city in the nation. We have the resources, the talent, and the will to achieve this," Mamdani said on Tuesday, surrounded by a coalition of housing advocates, labor union representatives, and city officials.
He said the construction boom will "kickstart" the city's economy. According to the city's Department of Housing Preservation & Development, the program will create an average of 30,000 jobs per year during construction and 12,700 permanent jobs once it's completed.
Mamdani is also directing around $5.6 billion to the New York City Housing Authority to renovate existing units and reduce long wait times. NYCHA has over 170,000 units, and many of them are decades old and badly in need of repairs.
In addition to around $5 million aimed at helping landlords to fix longstanding maintenance issues and cover missed rent, the plan also targets landlords with troubled histories with "roof-to-cellar" inspections of their properties.
"This is about putting city government in the driver's seat. This is about delivering the changes that New Yorkers have been demanding with little avail," Mamdani said. "We will prove that government can deliver on the solutions to the toughest problems, not just debate them."
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Louisiana Advances One of the Country’s ‘Cruelest’ Anti-Homeless Bills
One homeless advocacy group said the bill, which would require homeless people to perform unpaid labor to pay for involuntary treatment, "evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow."
Apr 18, 2026
The Louisiana House of Representatives voted this week to pass what the National Homelessness Law Center says is "one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country."
Like many other anti-homeless bills being advanced around the country following a 2024 Supreme Court decision allowing states and cities to criminalize homelessness, House Bill 211, which passed by a vote of 70-28, makes unauthorized sleeping in public spaces a crime.
It is punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to six months, or both. Repeat offenders could face one to two years in prison with hard labor and a $1,000 fine.
The bill, which will now advance to the GOP-controlled state Senate, has been nicknamed the "Streets to Success Act" because, according to its sponsor, state Rep. Debbie Villio (R-79), the goal is not to jail homeless people but to "connect them to service providers."
Those who are convicted of sleeping outdoors could be given the option to avoid jail time by instead entering into a mandatory treatment program for at least 12 months. The bill authorizes local governments to set up semi-permanent camps in remote areas, where defendants would be required to stay and receive treatment.
The bill requires homeless defendants to pay “all or part of the cost of the treatment program to which he is assigned," a steep cost for many, as the average cost for residential drug and alcohol rehab treatment in Louisiana is more than $4,400 per week, according to the addiction referral service directory Addicted.org.
According to the bill, those who cannot afford this steep cost would be required to perform unpaid labor for the state or a local community center in lieu of payment.
Bill Quigley, director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans, called the bill's entire premise "a farce."
"If people had the resources to pay for housing and physical and/or mental health services, they would not be on the street," he told Common Dreams.
He described it as a "cruel theater of the absurd" based on "the lie that people choose to be homeless." The law, he said, "assumes our communities have plenty of affordable apartments and lots of mental and physical health services available."
In reality, he said, these services are chronically underfunded, and the city would need to build about 55,000 more affordable rental units to provide enough housing for its rent-burdened population.
Though it is not uncommon for homeless people to struggle with mental health or substance use issues, increases in the cost of housing have been shown to have a direct relationship with increasing homelessness.
Homelessness in New Orleans dropped considerably in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, when Congress provided permanent housing subsidies for those in need. But after those funds have dried up, homelessness in the city shot up higher than before the pandemic, a study by the homelessness nonprofit UNITY of Greater New Orleans found in 2024.
New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris (D), who has opposed the bill, pointed to the success of the city's Home for Good program, which took a "Housing First" approach to homelessness, providing rental subsidies and allowing people to move straight from encampments into housing without requirements that they obtain treatment.
According to a May 2025 report, the program had moved 1,133 people off the streets and into supportive housing and allowed eight homeless encampments to close.
"Through our Home for Good program, we house an individual for roughly $21,844 per year. By comparison, jailing that same person costs an average of $51,000—and failing to act at all can cost up to $55,000 in emergency room visits and crisis rehousing," Harris said. "HB 211 would steer Louisiana toward the most expensive option while producing no lasting housing, no services, and no real path forward for the people involved."
Harris has also decried the bill's creation of what she called "internment camps" for treatment. The bill's text requires these facilities to be far away from downtown and other high-value neighborhoods, which she said separates those trying to rebuild their lives from work, public transit, and other critical services, and further isolates them from society.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which allowed cities to enforce public-camping bans against unhoused people even when shelter is unavailable, around two dozen states and hundreds of municipalities have passed various measures criminalizing poverty.
The homeless advocacy group Housing Not Handcuffs points out that many of the bills were written by the Cicero Institute, a far-right think tank with heavy backing from billionaire tech investors that now has deep influence over the housing policy of President Donald Trump, who has taken a hacksaw to funding for public housing programs under the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Housing Not Handcuffs said Louisiana's bill, which would almost certainly be signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry if passed by the state Senate, "is an extreme take on the already extreme copy-paste legislation" peddled by Cicero.
"This bill forces homeless people charged with a crime to make the false choice between jail or at least one year of forced treatment," the group said. "Louisiana has a long history—and present—of chain gangs, prison labor, and entrenched white supremacy. This bill clearly evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow."
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Rent Control Will Protect Students Against Homelessness
The situation is dire. Students and their families are suffering right now, with young people’s futures at stake—as well their immediate well being.
Mar 21, 2026
The numbers are dire. More than 1.4 million students are homeless in the United States. In California, there are more homeless students than ever: At least 230,000.
Something needs to be done, and quick. Rent control will provide the relief that students and their families need right now.
Numerous experts have pointed out that students need stable, affordable housing to learn and thrive. California Homeless Youth Project Director Pixie Pearl, for example, told LA School Report that unhoused students struggle with a lack of access to nutritious foods, mental healthcare problems, and chronic absenteeism, among many other issues. It’s incredibly difficult to receive an education when one is homeless.
We also know that unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates, as reported by Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, and a wide-ranging UC San Francisco study on homelessness found that most people are pushed into the streets because of sky-high rents. So immediately addressing skyrocketing rents is key, and rent control is the tool to use.
Yet corporate landlords and certain politicians want to keep the status quo, saying that we merely need to build more housing to drive down rents. Not only is there no urgency in that approach, which has serious flaws and does nothing for students right now, but developers build almost exclusively luxury rental housing—a key fact that Zillow’s chief economist pointed out as a major problem for improving housing affordability. And, of course, poor and middle- and working-class families with students can’t afford luxury apartments.
As a result, housing experts are increasingly calling for politicians to pass rent regulations to protect tenants.
University of Southern California Professor Manuel Pastor, co-author of the USC Dornsife’s Rent Matters report, wrote: “The housing crisis requires a range of strategies, [and] moderate rent regulation is a useful tool to be nested in broader strategy. It has fewer damaging effects than are often imagined, it can address economic pain, and it can promote housing stability. And housing stability matters because it is associated with physical, social, and psychological well-being; higher educational achievement by the young; and benefits for people of color.”
In response to a recent effort to pass rent stabilization in Providence, Rhode Island, University of Minnesota Professor Edward Goetz noted in a Boston Globe op-ed: “City officials are responding to the [housing affordability] crisis with a proposal to enact rent stabilization. Vocal critics of the policy make a wide range of doomsday predictions about what will happen if a city adopts it. But the actual record of rent stabilization across the country tells a dramatically different story. In fact, rent stabilization can be an effective approach to the affordability challenges faced by Providence renters, as it has been in other U.S. cities.”
In a 2023 letter to the Biden Administration, a group of 32 top economists wrote: “Through well-crafted policies, rent regulations can be designed in a manner that protects the general health and well being of renters, promotes affordability, mitigates future inflationary episodes, and maintains landlords’ ability to receive a fair and reasonable return on investment.”
But rent control isn’t the only tool to protect students against homelessness.
Housing Is A Human Right and other activists have long urged elected officials to quickly implement the “3 Ps”: Protect tenants through rent control and other tenant protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing through such concepts as adaptive reuse and prefabricated housing.
It bears repeating. The situation is dire. Students and their families are suffering right now, with young people’s futures at stake – as well their immediate well being.
Rent control will immediately stabilize rent and bring quick relief. Politicians, across the country, have that tool at their disposal. They need to pass rent regulations. Pronto.
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Passports Welcome Here: The Importance of Crossing Borders at the Library
Back new bills now up for review to support libraries in providing passport application services, particularly in communities where it can be difficult or intimidating for people to use other federal offices.
Feb 28, 2026
Recent public announcements that many public libraries could no longer accept passport applications surprised many.
In a now unusual attempt at bicameral and bipartisan legislation, Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), have put forth bills (H.R.6997 and S.3733) that would enable all public libraries, whether they are organized as units of government or nonprofit organizations, to serve as passport acceptance facilities designated by the State Department.
As a university educator in Library and Information Science, I was at first taken aback by the passport application ban attempt. Many others were surprised that libraries had been accepting passport applications. But then perhaps neither the service nor the attempt to shut it down are a surprise at all.
Public libraries across the nation are an integral piece of our social and civic infrastructure. Librarians see up close the needs for social services in their communities, and they step up to meet those needs.
Libraries are where people step from one world into another, sometimes by opening books and sometimes by sharing space with people very different from themselves.
Libraries provide internet access for people who do not have the resources to get online from home or may not have a home where they can get online. Libraries provide physical shelter, in times of climate emergency like extreme heatwaves or intense freezes. They provide shelter for people who need to get off the street for a few hours to find a safe place. Recently, they have begin offering telehealth booths to support medical care in remote communities.
Libraries promote literacy, a lynchpin of economic security for both individuals and the communities in which they live. Indeed, there is considerable research demonstrating that there are higher literacy rates in communities with access to a public library, particularly in low income and rural areas.
There are approximately 17,000 public libraries in the United States, a number that has remained remarkably stable in the past few decades. Despite funding difficulties, skepticism about the value of physical libraries in the digital era, and political and social challenges to library collections, libraries remain at the center, meeting many of those communities’ needs.
Of course, it is perfect that libraries were places to apply for passports as they are places of border crossing. Libraries are where people step from one world into another, sometimes by opening books and sometimes by sharing space with people very different from themselves.
There is a public library that famously straddles the Vermont-Canada border where you can literally step across a border. That quiet fame has grown louder now that it plays a key role in Louise Penny’s latest novel, The Black Wolf.
To step into the world of the library at most you’ll need a library card. Everyone is welcome.
To be sure, not every library looks like it welcomes all people with open arms. Legacy architecture and practices can perpetuate the perception of the library as hushed and exclusive.
The precarity of funding for public libraries often prevents libraries from addressing that perception. Many libraries aspire to renovating and modernizing their spaces in ways that they simply cannot afford. Public libraries rely upon local taxpayers for much of their funding, but they also rely upon federal grants to innovate and develop new initiatives.
Nearly one year ago, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order intended to dismantle the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The agency awards almost $300,000,000 in grants every year, including more than $160 million that goes to states and largely supports the work of public libraries.
The executive order was successfully challenged in court by the attorneys general of 21 states, and on November 21 of last year, the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island struck down the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
One result of this victory is that last month, IMLS awarded for eight projects “dedicated to building AI literacy.” Once again, libraries see a need and step up to meet it.
Many people voice public criticism and concern about the use of public libraries. Critics complain that they are overrun with noisy teens after school, socializing and playing video games. Some complain libraries are filled with sleeping, foul-smelling people who experience homelessness, or that they are opening the doors for children to step into obscenity.
But it is crucial to see the critical need for accessible public libraries in this country. It is important to support these bills now up for review to support libraries in providing passport application services, particularly in communities where it can be difficult or intimidating for people to use other federal offices.
More than that, it is essential for the country for policymakers, funders, and all Americans to support libraries through ensuring funding, community advocacy, and moral support. It is crucial to help libraries continue to be places where everyone can cross borders and step into new worlds.
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The Republican Policy of Making More People Homeless
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.
Dec 21, 2025
As Congress continues to negotiate the next set of funding bills before the upcoming deadline at the end of January, policymakers must ensure sufficient and timely funding for critical housing and homelessness programs. These programs help millions of people afford housing, a basic need. But proposed cuts could leave more than 600,000 people struggling to pay the rent — a sizable share of whom would then be at high risk of eviction and homelessness (see table here for details by state). Congress should instead use a final 2026 funding bill to keep people in their homes and support communities’ efforts to make housing more affordable for everyone.
The Administration and congressional Republicans already made deep cuts to health coverage and food assistance in their megabill enacted earlier this year. They could impose similarly harmful cuts to housing and homelessness assistance through the appropriations bill now under negotiation. It’s critical that no families lose assistance and communities have the resources to at least maintain current levels of assistance.
To make that happen, a final funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should:
- Help more than 170,000 formerly homeless people stay in their homes with access to services. HUD issued a funding notice for the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, the main homelessness solutions program, that would cap the percentage of funding that can be used to pair rental assistance with supportive services at 30 percent — compared to about 87 percent under current policy. That change alone would take housing assistance away from more than 170,000 formerly homeless people, HUD estimates.While HUD temporarily rescinded the notice, the department stated it will make “technical corrections” and reissue it. The funding notice includes other policy changes for the funding competition that are so drastically different from previous years that some communities could be left without any CoC funding in 2026 to connect unhoused people with housing.But the timing of the notice alone will cause chaos. Some communities are facing delays in their 2026 funding because HUD issued the new funding notice months later than the usual grantmaking timeline. CoC-funded projects are on a variety of funding timelines, so projects that are expecting money in January will receive nothing. The longer HUD takes to reissue a notice and complete the grantmaking process, the longer and more extensive the gaps in funding for housing and services for formerly and currently homeless people. Many communities do not have resources to fund these services in the interim, forcing them to scale back or end housing assistance and services, which will leave many people experiencing homelessness once again.Congress needs to ensure that communities have the funding they need. Congress can — and should — direct HUD in the final funding bill to renew existing grants for 2026 (which would complete the two-year grants that first provided funding in 2025). This would keep people stably housed, and prevent funding disruptions for communities across the country, all without any increase in funding.
- Maintain assistance for the more than 50,000 households that use the successful Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program to pay the rent each month. The EHV program has provided life-saving assistance to households at risk of or experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and trafficking, but its funding is expected to run out in 2026. While both the House and Senate include some helpful language in their HUD funding bills, neither proposal would fully address the funding cliff. A final bill should provide additional funding to ensure these households don’t lose assistance and the stability they’ve achieved.
- Sufficiently fund the Housing Choice Voucher program, the country’s largest federal rental assistance program. Neither the House or Senate annual funding bills for HUD include enough funding to keep pace with inflation and maintain existing levels of assistance in the voucher program. Without adequate funding, many agencies would have to stop issuing vouchers to new families as a way to control costs, leading to fewer people getting the help they need. This has already happened to many agencies this year, so HUD and housing agencies have nearly depleted existing emergency resources.We estimate that, under the House bill, about 411,000 fewer people could receive assistance, and about 243,000 fewer people would receive assistance under the Senate bill. Housing Choice Vouchers are a critical tool for helping people with low incomes afford housing, including people experiencing homelessness. It’s particularly important to ensure the voucher program has robust funding given the other threats to assistance discussed above.
Taken together, these cuts would further limit who receives housing assistance, leaving up to 600,000 more people without an affordable, stable home in the coming year. Rental assistance is a critical, evidence-based solution to reducing and preventing homelessness, but already eligible households can’t access it due to chronic underfunding. More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent. Taking the steps outlined above could keep these problems from getting worse.
Cuts to rental assistance, on the other hand, will leave more people waiting for help, especially because the deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the Republican megabill passed in July will make housing even less affordable for millions of families. Both of these programs support housing stability by covering other basic expenses, allowing families more room in their budgets for rent. Moreover, access to health supports is a critical component of the highly effective strategies that pair rental assistance with personalized health and social services to help unhoused or formerly unhoused people — the very supports the Administration is also attempting to drastically scale back.
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.A final funding bill for 2026 must also protect against further partisan use of rescission authority and illegal withholding of funds by including language that ensures appropriated funding reaches the communities Congress intends, and that agencies have sufficient staff to manage these programs. Such guardrails along with the provisions described above would immediately benefit people across the country and are a necessary step for making housing and other basic needs more affordable.
Looking forward, Congress should do more to address housing affordability and homelessness. Housing costs are typically the single biggest part of a household’s budget, especially for people with low and moderate incomes. With record numbers of people being forced into homelessness and more than 24 million renters spending more than half of their incomes on rent, expanding rental assistance, in addition to increasing supportive services and the supply of affordable housing, are needed to make progress.
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The Words We Use to Describe Homelessness Will Get People Killed
A huge swath of the political and media spectrum sees a person living on the street as either an aesthetic nuisance or criminal-in-waiting. We should see them for who they are: a person suffering and vulnerable, deserving of our empathy.
Dec 01, 2025
Last month, Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade said of people living with mental illness on our streets: “Involuntary lethal injection… Just kill ’em.” He apologized—after the clip ricocheted across the internet—but the words were said, on air, to millions.
I run a nonprofit that directly serves the homeless. We meet people where they are—under overpasses, on subways, in shelters and supportive housing. I see, daily, how language like “vagrant,” or “zombie” strips people of their personhood. It lowers the public’s guard against cruelty and raises the political ceiling for punitive policies. We cannot afford to pretend that words don’t matter.
“Vagrancy,” once a legal catch‑all used to police and punish poor and Black Americans, is being rehabilitated in public discourse; historians have warned what that signals. And major tabloids routinely label our neighbors “vagrants” in crime headlines, blending poverty status with criminal identity in ways that echo the past.
Even federal policy is now framed around “fighting vagrancy.” That phrase isn’t from a century‑old placard; it’s the heading and premise of a July 2025 executive order, which opens by declaring “endemic vagrancy” a public menace and directs federal agencies to prioritize encampment removals and civil commitment.
The best research shows people experiencing homelessness are far more often victims of violence than perpetrators.
A huge swath of the political and media spectrum sees a person living on the street as either an aesthetic nuisance or criminal-in-waiting. To them, a person living on the street is barely a person at all but rather an indication of broader disorder that must be swept away or removed. But where should they be removed to? What should happen to them when they get there? Those questions are unimportant to certain portions of the media and political ecosystem.
The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling in 2024 cleared the way for cities to punish sleeping outside even when shelter is unavailable. Some jurisdictions have read that as a green light for broader crackdowns rather than investments in housing and health care—turning survival behaviors into ticketable or jailable offenses. The July executive order doubled down, instructing federal agencies to preference grants for jurisdictions that enforce bans on “urban camping and loitering” and to support encampment removals with federal dollars. Words like “vagrancy” aren’t just stigmatizing; they now allocate money and power.
This year we saw what happens when the politics of sweeps outrun basic safety. In January, Cornelius Taylor was killed by a bulldozer during an encampment clearance in Atlanta—first chalked up to overdose, later shown by autopsy to be blunt‑force trauma. And in my home city of New York, Debrina Kawam was fatally set on fire by a stranger while she was sleeping in a subway car. Vocabulary that treats people as nuisances rather than neighbors makes such tragedies more likely.
I know public disorder is real. But I also know—by data and by name—that most of the people you step past on your commute are surviving traumas you don’t see.
The best research shows people experiencing homelessness are far more often victims of violence than perpetrators. In California’s landmark CASPEH study, 38% of participants experienced violence during their current episode of homelessness, and nearly three quarters reported violence at some point in their lives. Mortality data tell the same story of precarity. In Los Angeles County alone, 2,508 people experiencing homelessness died in 2023—an average of nearly seven people every day. The rate remains multiple times higher than that of the general population.
As a sector, we’ll keep doing our part: street outreach, housing navigation, medical and behavioral health care, and prevention. But leaders in government and media must stop normalizing language that primes the public for harm. Phrases like “person without housing” or “person who is homeless” more accurately reflect that homelessness is a temporary status, not an identity or permanent state of being. And in most cases, we can refer to our neighbors in media stories or political policy without any reference to their housing status.
I know public disorder is real. But I also know—by data and by name—that most of the people you step past on your commute are surviving traumas you don’t see. They are sons, daughters, parents, veterans, and caregivers. Some are literally recovering from yesterday’s assault. They are not “vermin.” They are not “zombies.”
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Make Americans Homeless Again: Trump's Intentional Housing Crisis
Trump is causing major damage, and his team at the Department of Housing and Urban Development knows it.
Nov 28, 2025
America’s urban landscapes are cursed with skyrocketing rents, evictions, and tent cities—thanks to President Donald Trump. His administration has launched what can only be described as a brutal, scorched-earth attack on federal housing programs. Trump's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is slashing billions from successful programs and proven initiatives that keep people off the streets. Trump clearly prioritizes ideological crusades over human lives. This is not a better policy; it is cruelty and it is exacerbating a housing crisis that has left millions of America’s citizens on the brink. Trump’s war on the vulnerable is forcing 170,000 Americans back into homelessness, gutting local efforts in states like California and New York, while ignoring root causes like unaffordable housing and stagnant wages.
At the heart of this disaster is the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, which helps connect homeless people with permanent rental subsidies, shelters, and support services. Under Trump’s HUD, this crucial program is being gutted for fiscal year 2026. More than half of its funding, previously designed for permanent housing, is now being redirected to temporary shelters that come with punitive preconditions such as mandatory drug treatment or work requirements.
Support for permanent housing is now limited to just 30% of the budget, a significant drop from the previous 90% that allowed flexibility for real needs. Local nonprofits will now find it harder to secure grants as HUD is also now imposing competitive bidding on nearly all funds. This means that eligibility is being wielded as a political weapon: Agree with the Trump administration on various issues and receive funding. Disagree on the issues and lose funding. Accountability is not the issue here; it’s all about Trump’s culture-war agenda, punishing progressive districts while rewarding red-state sycophants.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families.
Trump is causing major damage, and his team knows it. Internal HUD documents admit these cuts will displace tens of thousands of people across the nation and erase years of progress in reducing chronic homelessness. In California, the epicenter of the crisis, Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the administration alongside 19 other states and two governors, arguing the changes are illegal. Los Angeles County alone stands to lose subsidies for 5,000 households, including families with children, and veterans. Even some Republicans, like Nebraska's Rep. Mike Flood, are scrambling for a one-year funding extension, a tacit admission that Trump's "reforms" are a recipe for chaos.
New York faces a similar apocalypse. Homelessness has surged amid post-pandemic evictions, leaving thousands of families in need of assistance. Trump's pivot to "shelters and rehabilitation centers" over long-term stability directly sabotages the city's "Housing First" model, which prioritizes rapid placement into homes before tackling addiction or mental health, proven to reduce recidivism and costs. Led by Attorney General Letitia James, the multistate lawsuit filed in Rhode Island's federal court calls this an unconstitutional power grab, as HUD rewrites congressional spending without approval. Over 1,000 organizations nationwide have begged Congress to intervene, while Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren demand answers on how these cuts will fuel tent encampments from Seattle to Boston.
HUD spokesperson Scott Turner has pathetically defended Trump, claiming that the Obama-Biden “Housing First” approach is a failed “homeless industrial complex” enabling addiction without accountability. But the data says otherwise. Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%, compared to Treatment First programs. But Trump’s “solution” will achieve the opposite, forcing people into transitional housing with strings attached, ignoring that most homelessness stems not from untreated addiction but from poverty. By capping permanent aid and politicizing grants, Trump is inflating costs and dooming the cycle to repeat. Families will fracture even though Trump claims he will make exceptions for those with children, vets, or seniors.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families. But as lawsuits mount and bipartisan pleas for extensions grow, perhaps Trump will be prevented from implementing his nefarious plan. By evicting the most vulnerable Americans to score political points, Trump is not draining the swamp; he is flooding the streets. Congress must act now to renew the grants and prevent Trump’s overreach that will affect tens of thousands of needs Americans. Let voters remember that in Trump’s America, there is nothing but evil and despair.
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'Reckless and Irresponsible': Trump Plans Deep Housing Cuts That Could Leave 200,000 Homeless
"HUD's current path risks causing a dangerous spike in street homelessness," warned a group of Senate Democrats.
Nov 14, 2025
Democratic lawmakers and advocates are voicing grave warnings after the Trump administration on Thursday unveiled its plan to slash funding for long-term housing programs, cuts that could leave nearly 200,000 people at risk of becoming homeless.
The New York Times reported that the administration's new proposal for Continuum of Care (CoC) funding "shifts billions to short-term programs that impose work rules, help the police dismantle encampments, and require the homeless to accept treatment for mental illness or addiction."
"By cutting aid for permanent housing by two-thirds next year, the plan risks a sudden end of support for most of the people the Continuum places in such housing nationwide, beginning as soon as January," the Times added. "All are disabled—a condition of the aid—and many are 50 or older. The document does not explain how they would find housing."
Shortly before the administration released its plan, which was first detailed by Politico in late September, a group of more than 40 Senate Democrats wrote in a letter to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner that the administration "must immediately reconsider these harmful and potentially illegal changes that could result in nearly 200,000 older adults, chronically homeless Americans with disabilities, veterans, and families being forced back onto the streets."
"HUD's current path risks causing a dangerous spike in street homelessness," the lawmakers wrote. "We implore you to make the better choice and expeditiously renew current CoC grants for fiscal year 2025 as authorized by Congress to protect communities and avoid displacing thousands of our nation’s most vulnerable individuals."
A HUD spokesperson responded dismissively to the letter, telling Politico in a statement that "Senate Democrats are doing the bidding of the homeless industrial complex."
The Trump administration's cuts come after more than 771,000 people across the US experienced homelessness on a given night in 2024, an 18% increase compared to 2023 and the highest level ever recorded.
Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in response to the Trump administration's plan that "people all over this nation have overcome homelessness and stabilized in HUD’s permanent housing programs."
"Many are just beginning that process and getting a shot at a new life,” said Oliva. "HUD's new funding priorities slam the door on them, their providers, and their communities. Make no mistake: Homelessness will only increase because of this reckless and irresponsible decision."
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Advocates Warn of ‘Forced Labor’ Camp for Homeless People in Utah Designed to Enforce Trump Order
An advocate for the National Homelessness Law Center warned that the 1,300-bed facility could be a "pilot" to put homeless people into similar conditions to Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz."
Oct 28, 2025
In an effort to fulfill President Donald Trump's executive order on homelessness, Utah is building a massive facility that housing advocates warn will function as an "internment camp" where the unhoused will be subject to forced labor.
Last month, Utah's homeless services agencies came to an agreement for the state to acquire a nearly 16-acre parcel of rural land in the Northpoint area of northwest Salt Lake City to construct the first-of-its-kind facility, which is slated to have 1,300 beds.
The genesis of the project began in July, following Trump's "Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets" executive order, which threatened to withhold funding from states and cities unless they criminalized homeless people camping on streets and ordered the attorney general to expand the use of involuntary civil commitment for adults experiencing homelessness.
Despite a large body of evidence showing their effectiveness at curbing crime while keeping people off the street, the order also required the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to end its support of "Housing First" policies that provide unhoused people with homes without the requirement of behavioral health treatment or sobriety.
Less than a week after Trump's homelessness order, Utah's Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, as well as the state Senate president and House speaker—both Republicans—sent a letter to the state's Homeless Services Board, which was created last year following a legislative push by the Cicero Insitute—a far-right think tank that has proposed aggressive measures to criminalize homelessness and which has had major influence over Trump's crackdown on the homeless during his second term.
In the letter, the leaders agreed with the Trump administration that they "do not support 'Housing First' policies that lack accountability." They directed the Board to "accelerate progress on a transformative, services-based homeless campus that prioritizes recovery, treatment, and long-term outcomes, not just emergency shelter."
As far back as 2023, Trump has proposed using "large parcels of inexpensive land" to set up "tent cities" or camps for homeless people, coupled with a pledge to use "every tool, lever, and authority" to clear encampments from city streets. On the podcast Invisible People, which focuses on homelessness in America, Eric Tars of the National Homelessness Law Center said Utah's new facility could be a "pilot program" for that effort around the country.
"Their end goal is not just jail," Tars said. "They want to put up more of these Alligator Alcatraz sprung structure type facilities," referring to the ramshackle immigration detention facility constructed in a remote part of Florida's Everglades earlier this year, where detainees have been cut off from access to their lawyers and are widely reported to suffer from inhumane treatment.
He noted that, under a proposal drafted by the chair of Utah's Homeless Services Board, Randy Shumway, more than 300 of the beds in the facility are slated for involuntary commitment. Other homeless people will be sent there for substance abuse treatment "as an alternative to jail" and will “receive care in a supervised environment where entry and exit are not voluntary.” Shumway referred to the facility as an “accountability center.”
“An individual would be sanctioned to go there. It would not be voluntary, Shumway said during a presentation, according to the Standard-Examiner. "They would be there for a period of probably 90 days with the opportunity to detox in order to get mental and behavioral health care, to get substance use disorder support, to get physical health care, and to be surrounded by a community that’s helping them in healing."
According to the proposal, the beds not slated for civil commitment will include "work-conditioned housing." Tars said that this is "the thing that scares me the most," because it "means forced labor."
He noted that other anti-homeless bills recently proposed in Republican states have a "forced labor element" to them. In Louisiana, a bill punishing outdoor camping introduced earlier this year proposes requiring those convicted to serve up to two years of "hard labor." Another bill introduced in West Virginia would have required those arrested for camping to take part in "facility upkeep" and other forms of vocational training.
Tars said that at the Utah facility, "even though theoretically you could come and go, they're going to be actively enforcing anti-camping, anti-loitering, all these other laws... if you step foot off the campus," which he noted is over seven miles away from downtown Salt Lake City and "in the middle of nowhere," with "no public transportation."
State officials have said they expect the facility to cost $75 million to construct, plus more than $30 million per year for ongoing operations. Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a low-income advocacy nonprofit based in Utah, has said that for a facility to treat such a large number of people adequately, the cost "will be much higher than $75 million."
Tibbitts also warned that the construction of a homeless shelter in such close proximity to a facility for involuntary commitment would create an atmosphere of fear that would deter homeless people from seeking help.
“A 300-400-bed mental and behavioral health facility that people are not allowed to leave is not a shelter but an incarceration option,” Tibbitts wrote in an email to the Utah News Dispatch. “Having such a facility colocated with a shelter would probably lead to a sense that if you do not follow the rules in one facility, you could be moved into the other.”
Although the Trump administration has portrayed homelessness as primarily the result of addiction or mental illness, Tibbitts noted that “the majority of the people who visit a shelter are not chronically homeless—they just need a place to stay following a short-term period of financial hardship."
“A senior citizen who had their rent increased beyond what they could afford," he said, "is not going to want to go to a quasi-correctional facility to get help finding a place to live that they can afford."
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Illinois Proved Bail Reform Works; Washington Wants to Undermine It
Illinois did not just pass bail reform with the Pretrial Fairness Act—it built a safer, fairer, and more lasting pretrial system. Other states should take note.
Oct 13, 2025
Two years ago last month, Illinois became the first state to end cash bail. Critics warned the change would unleash chaos. It didn’t. Instead, Illinois proved that bail reform works—and endures.
Now, Congress and the White House are ignoring those facts, weaponizing fear and misinformation to attack the law and push for rollbacks nationwide. We can’t let them rewrite the story.
All my life, I’ve watched courts measure humanity against a dollar figure, jailing people—including members of my own family—not because they may be dangerous but because they’re poor. Cash bail doesn’t make us safer; it turns freedom into a commodity. That’s why I’ve spent more than a decade working in states across the country to build a pretrial system where safety, not wealth, determines who goes free before trial.
Cash bail doesn’t just punish poverty—it undermines the fundamental purpose of our pretrial system. It jails thousands of legally innocent people simply because they can’t pay, costing taxpayers billions and destabilizing lives. Even a few days behind bars can mean the loss of someone’s job, housing, or custody of their children, pushing them deeper into crisis and increasing the likelihood of future justice system involvement. Meanwhile, those with money—including people who may pose serious risks—can buy their freedom.
The lesson from Illinois is clear: Reform is not easy, but it is achievable and worth the fight.
Bail reform flips that logic. Under Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act, judges still decide when someone must be detained, but those decisions follow real hearings where evidence is presented—not the size of someone’s bank account. People can still be held if they pose a risk, but no one is jailed simply for being poor, and no one can buy their way out.
Despite the facts, public fear about crime is often driven not by bail reform but by visible crises like homelessness, untreated mental illness, and addiction—problems our legal system was never designed to solve. Too often, these conditions are criminalized through low-level charges instead of addressed with care. Cash bail can’t fix them—but investments in housing, treatment, and community services can. Yet just as those solutions are most needed, President Donald Trump and Congress slashed their funding. That failure, not bail reform, is the real threat to public safety.
Illinois recognized cash bail’s harm and built a different path. Its Pretrial Fairness Act is a national model, proving that reform is possible, sustainable, and broadly supported when built with care. The act was drafted with input from legal experts, lawmakers, impacted leaders, victims’ rights advocates, and grassroots organizers, balancing ideals and practical realities. Negotiations required compromise, but the core principle held: No one would be jailed simply for being poor.
Courts and communities had two years to prepare before the law took effect, and the coalition that championed it didn’t scatter—it trained judges, secured funding, and defended the law. The Bail Project, where I work, was one of many partners demonstrating the law’s potential. From 2019 to 2022, we provided free bail assistance and pretrial support to nearly 1,500 low-income Illinoisans—95% of whom returned to court without having money on the line. Building on that work, we invested $2.9 million in Chicago to pilot a supportive pretrial release model linking people to housing, jobs, healthcare, transportation, and court reminders. We also connected people released on recognizance bonds with affordable apartments—showing how stability keeps people from cycling back into jail.
Since implementation, crime did not surge—in fact, Chicago had its lowest summer murder rate since the 1960s—and court appearance rates held steady. The evidence is clear: Communities are not less safe because people are no longer detained for being poor. Illinois shows that when freedom is determined by risk and evidence rather than wealth, safety and fairness go hand in hand.
Yet even in the face of evidence, critics continue to exploit public anxieties about crime. In several states, misinformation has derailed reform—from outright repeal in Alaska to rapid rollbacks in New York and California. Illinois broke that pattern. Lawmakers held firm, recognizing that retreat would betray the communities most harmed by cash bail. That resolve is what separates reforms that endure from those that collapse.
Illinois did not just pass bail reform with the Pretrial Fairness Act—it built a safer, fairer, and more lasting pretrial system. Other states should take note. The lesson from Illinois is clear: Reform is not easy, but it is achievable and worth the fight.
History shows this pattern again and again: Every generation confronts reforms once branded as dangerous. Seat belt laws. Social Security. Medicaid. Each was dismissed as risky. Each is now recognized as essential. Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act belongs in that lineage.
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