President Donald Trump’s new law-and-order approach to homelessness bears several striking resemblances to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s.
Trump wants cities to enforce laws that make it illegal for homeless people to sleep outside. So does Newsom.
Trump threatened to withhold funding from places that don’t. So did Newsom.
And the president wants to make it easier to force homeless people living with serious mental illness or addiction into treatment. So does Newsom.
It’s rare for Trump and Newsom, typically adversaries, to see eye to eye on anything. But when the president signed an executive order this week pushing cities and states to use law enforcement to get unhoused people off the streets, some of it read like déjà vu to Californians.
“I don’t know that there’s a huge contrast between parts of this order and what winds are already blowing toward in California,” said Ryan Finnigan, deputy director of research for the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
But Trump doesn’t want to stop at banning homeless encampments and pushing people into treatment, and that’s where he and Newsom diverge: The president wants to upend two core tenets of California’s homelessness policy.
Trump wants to abolish federal support for “housing first,” which is the idea that homeless individuals should get housing even if they are still using drugs, and “harm reduction,” which focuses on preventing overdoses and otherwise making drug use safer.
Both tenets are backed by research and have been the gold standard in California — and at the federal level — for years
The threat of abandoning those philosophies has left local service providers scrambling to figure out whether they’ll have to change how they’ve helped homeless Californians for years or risk losing out on federal funds.
“For all of that to be upended, the entire structure of service delivery is going to be turned upside down,” said John Maceri, CEO of The People Concern, a nonprofit that serves unhoused people in Los Angeles.
More of the same in California?
Trump’s executive order, titled “Ending crime and disorder on America’s streets,” seeks to prioritize funding for states and cities that enforce bans on open drug use, camping, loitering and squatting. It also orders the Attorney General to make federal funds available for removing encampments in places where state and local resources aren’t enough.
The order comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court removed protections for people living on the streets in California and other western states, ruling cities can ban camping even if they have no shelter beds.
Newsom already was pressuring cities to crack down on homeless encampments long before Trump’s order. In May, he urged every city in the state to pass an ordinance making it illegal to camp on public property. As an example of how this should be done, he released a model ordinance that would make it illegal to camp in one place for more than three nights in a row, block streets or sidewalks and build semi-permanent structures.
But Newsom was quick to distance himself from Trump’s policies.
“Like so many of Trump’s executive orders, this order is more focused on creating distracting headlines and settling old scores than producing any positive impact,” spokesperson Tara Gallegos said in an emailed statement. “But, his imitation (even poorly executed) is the highest form of flattery.”
Some experts say Trump, who has a history of holding funding hostage over perceived slights, could use his new executive order as a way to cut off money to California.
The order doesn’t specify exactly what compliance looks like, Finnigan said. At least 50 California cities have banned homeless encampments in the past year, according to a study by UC Berkeley researchers. But if homelessness doesn’t decrease in a way Trump is satisfied with, the president could accuse California of failing to enforce those laws and cut the state’s funding, Finnigan said.
That threat comes as the Trump administration already is cutting funds for homeless services, affordable housing and Medicaid.
Trump’s order also prioritizes committing more people to institutions from the street. The order seeks to make it easier to commit people with mental illness who can’t care for themselves, while also promising grants and other assistance to help ramp up commitments, and threatening to divert funding away from places that don’t push people into treatment facilities “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” It also promises to prioritize funding to expand mental health courts and drug courts.
Newsom, too, has made it a priority to get people living with mental illness and addiction out of encampments and into treatment — without their consent, if necessary. His CARE Court program, which went live in all 58 counties at the end of last year, allows judges to put people into mental health and addiction treatment plans, but stops short of allowing judges to force compliance. Newsom also supported a 2023 law that expanded who could be forced into treatment under a conservatorship.
Trump’s order prompted a backlash from groups that support the civil rights of people with mental illnesses and disabilities. The National Alliance on Mental Health, which maintains that forced treatment should be used as a last resort, said Trump’s order raises “grave concerns.” Disability Rights California, which also opposed CARE Court, said Trump’s order goes a step beyond what California is already doing.
“The playbook looks similar,” said Greg Cramer, associate director of public policy. “But I think the consequences of the Trump action go even further.”
But the order doesn’t include funding for new mental health or addiction treatment beds. In a state already struggling with a lack of resources, some experts said Trump’s order for more forced treatment feels hollow.
“Even if they agreed to go into treatment, where are these facilities that they’re supposed to go into?” Maceri asked.
No more housing first
In ending federal support for housing first and harm reduction strategies to fight homelessness, Trump’s order ends years of precedent. California has long practiced housing first, which means everyone is entitled to housing, even if they have an untreated mental illness or are using drugs. The idea is that it’s much easier to receive treatment or get clean while housed than it is on the street.
Instead, Trump wants people in federal housing programs to have to submit to substance abuse treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation. His order also stops federal funding for harm reduction.
The People Concern, which provides street outreach and runs permanent housing, offers the opiate overdose reversing drug Narcan to its clients. It gives out antiseptic wipes to help people who inject drugs avoid dangerous infections, and it doesn’t evict tenants just because they are using drugs.
The organization also refers people to treatment programs. But not everyone is ready for that, Maceri said. The harm reduction strategies help build trust — and keep people safe — until they are ready to get clean, he said.
The People Concern, like many nonprofits, uses state and private funds — not federal dollars — to pay for harm reduction services.
But Trump’s order directs the Attorney General to review whether organizations that get federal funds and also “knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia” or “permit the use of distribution of illicit drugs” on their property are violating federal law – and bring civil or criminal actions against them if so.
That could mean groups like The People Concern have to change their practices.
“If it goes that far,” Maceri said, “I’m certainly not going to put our staff or our clients in legal jeopardy.”
