East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO) strongly condemns President Trump’s July 24th Executive Order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which instructs states and localities to criminalize homelessness, force them into institutional settings, and violate their privacy.
We are also appalled by the President’s takeover and mobilization of the Washington, DC police in order to force all of DC’s unhoused residents to “move out, IMMEDIATELY” and send them “FAR from the Capital.”
With HUD reporting a national record of 771,480 people unhoused on a single night last year—including 5,616 unhoused people in DC, over 80% of whom were Black—vilifying and rounding up our cities’ most vulnerable residents is racist, cruel, irrational, and dangerous.
Brett Andrews, Interim Chief Executive of All Home, said,
“This executive order may well lead the country to a new low point in the fight against homelessness. It undermines decades of evidence and practice proving that the most effective way to address homelessness is by first meeting the essential need for housing. Only with a safe, stable place to call home can people benefit from supportive services…”
Housing First, including harm reduction; voluntary, community-based services; and deeply rooted support systems, has been the core philosophy of the federal government since the first Bush Administration and is credited with cutting veteran homelessness in half over the past decade. Coercion, criminalization, and forced institutionalization stand in direct opposition to these proven practices.
Learn more about the EO and its impacts from Ann Oliva at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
In a statement in response to the unprecedented move by the federal government to control local law enforcement operations in the nation’s capital, the Alliance for Housing Justice said, “If the goal is to solve homelessness, forced mass displacement and criminalization do the opposite: they deepen trauma, erect barriers to housing and work, worsen racial disparities, and put women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, and other underserved groups at greater risk.”
EBHO reaffirms that homelessness is not a crime. Instead of criminalizing survival, the federal government must scale up investments in affordable housing, supportive services, and harm reduction strategies that honor human rights and uphold personal autonomy.
This Executive Order is the latest and most extreme escalation of a growing movement to criminalize poverty. Cities and states across the country have used the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass as a green light to make homelessness a crime. As we said then, “We stand with our members and partners as we call on local and state government leaders to reject this decision, and instead continue to invest in affordable housing for all. We know that is the only real and sustainable solution to ending homelessness.“
We have already seen this play out here at home. In January 2025, the National Homelessness Law Center reported that over 150 cities across the US had passed laws banning homeless people from sleeping in public places. Of those cities, 45 are in California.
In Oakland last September, emboldened by that same Supreme Court ruling, former Mayor Sheng Thao issued an Executive Order directing police and other City departments to remove unhoused people from encampments and cite them for violations of Oakland municipal code. EBHO denounced this policy because we know that simply moving our unhoused neighbors from one site to another, or chasing them out of our city altogether, is not a real or long-term solution.
In February of this year, despite efforts by EBHO and many of our partners to oppose the decision, the Fremont City Council voted 6-1 to adopt a policy making it illegal to camp on public property and criminalizing the act of “aiding” and “abetting” homeless encampments, which could include humanitarian aid by service providers, churches distributing food, and street medicine teams.
Our message is clear: Homelessness is not a crime. Housing is a human right.
These declarations, whether from the Oval Office, the Supreme Court, or City Hall, will never solve homelessness. They will only push vulnerable people further into the margins, while failing to address the real issue: a severe shortage of affordable, accessible, and supportive housing.
As our allies at the Alliance for Housing Justice stated: “Serious leaders must reject Trump’s approach and invest in implementing real solutions at scale: Build and preserve social and public housing; expand permanent supportive housing and services; and enact strong tenant protections so residents aren’t pushed into homelessness in the first place.”
Join EBHO and our partners by leaning into compassion, humanity, and the fight for permanent, proven solutions to end homelessness.
We encourage you to check out Housing Not Handcuffs, a national campaign to end the criminalization of homelessness and advocate for housing as a human right, created by the National Homelessness Law Center and National Coalition for the Homeless.