Fed's new homelessness directive goes farther than most CA cities' have gone re: homeless amelioration
Most media choose to focus on the political ramifications of the Trump administration's new law 'n' order-tinged homelessness directives. But the excellent Calmatters (excerpted below) examines the real differences between status quo CA approaches to the unhoused and the direction of the new fed orders--especially when it comes to managing illegal encampments and drug usage & addiction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read the whole thing here.
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