The Dangerous Fallout of Trump's Executive Order Targeting People Without Housing

On July 24, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to address America’s homelessness and mental public health crisis by encouraging states to broadly apply involuntary civil commitment – a process that allows local and state governments to force a person with severe mental illness or substance use disorder into a treatment facility indefinitely without their consent and without being sentenced for a crime. As a result, federal resources will deprioritize/disincentivize housing-first and public health strategies that have already proven to be more effective in solving homelessness, poverty, and substance use.

Instead of prioritizing America’s housing and public health needs, the executive order weaponizes false assumptions about substance use to justify a massive expansion of forced treatment to remove unhoused people from the public eye. Disguised as a public safety measure, the executive order signals a return to the failed approaches of the past that will criminalize poverty, expand mass institutionalization, and worsen public health outcomes nationwide. At Dream.Org, we believe that public health is public safety. America's public health and public safety does not improve with more jails or forced treatment — it improves with stable housing, voluntary care, community support, and dignity.

Substance Use and People Without Housing 

The executive order claims that "nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes," and that "the overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both." These statistics are misleading and stigmatizing. 

For those who struggle with addiction, stable housing—not forced treatment—is the most effective foundation for recovery. Decades of research consistently demonstrate that forced treatment is less effective than voluntary treatment. Forced treatment has lower success rates, and people who are not prepared for treatment are more likely to relapse quickly after completing programs. Criminalizing substance use and homelessness does not address the underlying causes of these issues, instead it adds more punishment to the suffering of our most vulnerable neighbors. 

Forcing Poor People Into Institutions

Perhaps most alarmingly, the order expands the civil commitment criteria to include people who "cannot care for themselves"—vague language that has historically been used to institutionalize people whose only "crime" was using substances while poor. It also encourages states to adopt "maximally flexible" commitment standards, which directs the Attorney General to reverse laws that protect people from being forcibly held in treatment facilities without their consent, making it easier for them to force larger numbers of people into institutions.

Abandoning Evidence-Based "Housing First" Solutions

The executive order abandons housing-first strategies that have successfully housed thousands over the past two decades. “Housing first” recognizes a basic truth: stable housing is a crucial foundation for people to address other challenges. By forcing unhoused people to "earn" housing through treatment compliance, we return to the failed approaches that kept our vulnerable neighbors cycling between streets, shelters, and institutions.

Requiring treatment to receive federal housing assistance fundamentally misunderstands the recovery process. If access to housing is contingent upon sobriety or treatment compliance, unhoused people who struggle with substance use will be excluded from the housing stability and resources needed to make recovery possible. 

The order also restricts funding for beneficial public health programs, including safe consumption sites that help prevent overdose deaths. These evidence-based interventions have been proven to save lives, reduce disease transmission, and connect people to treatment—but the order dismisses these strategies as merely facilitating drug use. 

Enhanced Surveillance and Data Sharing

The order requires organizations receiving federal funding to collect invasive health and behavioral data about people without housing, and to share that information with law enforcement. Service providers thus become extensions of the surveillance state, likely deterring people from seeking help. 

In addition, the executive order has implications for the expansion of data sharing and enhanced surveillance on individuals with sex offenses as well as unhoused people. The order requires the Attorney General to prioritize grants for states that enforce prohibitions and track locations of unhoused people and people with sex offenses, which could lead to the expansion of invasive, costly use of monitoring technologies. Similar deployment of GPS ankle monitors and other surveillance technologies by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could result in increased costs to taxpayers, data miscalculations, and coerced digital surveillance at-scale. If states and municipalities are forced to deploy similar surveillance technologies against the unhoused people and people with sex offenses, the negative impacts of increased surveillance will likely be duplicated. 

Take Action

Decades of research show that involuntarily institutionalizing people experiencing homelessness is costly, traumatic, and ineffective in supporting long-term stability and well-being.People cycle in and out of institutions without receiving the stable housing and community-based support needed to facilitate recovery. Public safety begins when we treat all people, including those who are unhoused, with the care, respect, and support they deserve, rather than continuing to criminalize them.

Here’s how you can find and support local organizations:

• 211: Dial 2-1-1 to find local services for people without housing and housing programs.
• National Alliance to End Homelessness: Identify your local Continuum of Care.
• HUD Continuum of Care: Contact your local Continuum of Care. 
• Justshelter.org: Find community organizations working to preserve affordable housing, prevent eviction, and reduce family homelessness. 
• HUD Find Shelter Tool. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers the Find Shelter tool to provide information about housing, shelter, health care, and clothing resources in communities nationwide. 

We choose to treat people who are unhoused and those who suffer from mental health challenges as urgent, solvable public health issues — not personal failings to be punished or hidden from view. We choose housing, healthcare, and human dignity.