The Trump administration may be considering taking measures to further criminalize or otherwise punish poor people for their poverty, including possibly sweeping unhoused people into increasingly unsafe areas or warehousing people in untenable and unsustainable conditions. The solution to homelessness is simple – affordable and accessible homes, which the Trump administration has consistently tried to undermine in the past two and a half years. The one thing that all people experiencing homelessness have in common is a lack of access to affordable homes, but the White House’s latest effort does not appear to include investing in affordable, accessible homes, opting instead to demonize those with low incomes. A delegation of Trump administration officials travelled to Los Angeles last week to develop plans to address homelessness in the city.
Homelessness in California is indeed a crisis, as it is in many parts of the country, but the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed actions that would increase homelessness, not reduce it. President Trump and HUD Secretary Ben Carson have proposed drastically shrinking or eliminating federal programs that keep the lowest-income people affordably housed; tripling rents for the lowest-income subsidized residents and raising rents for all others; evicting more than 25,000 immigrant families, including 55,000 children, from subsidized housing; and allowing homeless shelters to discriminate and refuse shelter to transgender and other LGBTQ people.
NLIHC will closely monitor any White House initiatives on homelessness and will alert advocates and provide needed tools to push back against any harmful proposals.
Read NLIHC’s press statement about the Trump administration’s actions at: https://tinyurl.com/y2oukurx