House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) sent a letter to President Donald Trump on October 28 condemning his reported plans to forcibly relocate individuals experiencing homelessness to federally owned facilities (see Memo, 9/16). In her letter, Chairwoman Waters demands the Trump administration provide additional information about these plans and the White House Council of Economic Advisers’ recent report, The State of Homelessness in America, which implies increased police presence and arrests would alleviate homelessness.
In her letter, Chairwoman Waters states, “Your shamelessness knows no bounds.” She writes that relocating people experiencing homelessness would only serve as an appearance-based solution, rather than solving the underlying causes of homelessness. She notes that the administration has proposed other policies that would exacerbate homelessness in the U.S., including defunding HUD programs, attempting to increase rents for the lowest-income HUD tenants, trying to evict mixed-status immigrant families from subsidized housing, decreasing access to shelter for homeless LGBTQ individuals, and weakening fair housing protections. She writes that the Council of Economic Advisers’ report ignores years of research on homelessness and recommends policies that will act as barriers for people trying to access housing, employment, and higher education.
Chairwoman Waters ends her letter by asking President Trump to answer seven questions regarding his proposal. Among the questions, she asks him to describe the administration’s specific plan to address homelessness in the U.S. and California, provide assurances that his plans will not violate the Constitution or federal civil rights laws, and share his position on her bill, the “Ending Homelessness Act of 2019” (H.R. 1856).
Read the letter from Chairwoman Waters at: https://tinyurl.com/y5pqjxmk