Donald Trump demanded that unhoused Washington, D.C., residents “have to move out [of the city] IMMEDIATELY.” The statement comes amid his continuing attacks on homeless people after signing an executive order pressing local governments across the country to unhoused people from the streets.
“We’re having a News Conference tomorrow in the White House,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”
Accompanying the post were photographs of tents on stretches of grass near D.C. roads, which have become an increasingly common sight in the nation’s capital over recent years. Although the official count of homeless individuals in the city decreased by nine percent last year, housing advocates say the true number is higher and will continue to rise unless the city budgets money for services to help them.
The executive order Trump signed last month, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” attacks homeless people by allowing law enforcement to displace and institutionalize them, with little to no guardrails.
“It’s one of the most harmful things to happen to folks who live outside in decades. It is not going to help anybody,” Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told The Guardian. “It sets the stage for rounding up folks who are homeless, folks with mental health issues, folks who are disabled — and instead of helping them, forcing them into detention camps and institutions. So it’s terrifying.”
Trump has hinted at his plans to attack individuals without permanent housing for years. In 2022, he called for using “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” to create tent cities full of unhoused people — essentially internment camps. His 2024 campaign plan proposed cracking down on people who are unhoused, addicted to drugs, or mentally ill by putting them in institutions, forced substance use treatment, or incarceration.
A June 2024 decision by the conservative majority in the Supreme Court made criminalizing homelessness easier by allowing cities to ban sleeping outdoors.
“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, adding that the majority’s decision was “unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
Sadly, within six months of the court’s ruling, approximately 100 cities — both Democratic- and Republican-led — banned people from sleeping outside. In just one additional month that number increased to around 150 cities across more than half of U.S. states.
Consistently low wages and rising cost of living — made worse by the Trump tariffs — keep “more than half of Americans” living “paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness,” according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — whose website the Trump administration apparently deleted last month.
Meanwhile, Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill strips away access to affordable or free health care by kicking millions off Medicaid.
“This law is devastating to the health and well-being of low-income, underserved, and unhoused individuals — people who have already faced many barriers to care,” the National Health Care for the Homeless Council said.
Now, the House and Senate are considering Trump-backed proposals to cut Section 8 affordable housing funds by 43 percent as part of the 2026 federal budget. Those subsidies help low-income households afford rent by filling in the gap between their income and housing costs.
That bill would leave approximately 411,000 additional Americans without stable and affordable housing, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The House version would also give the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the authority to let state and local housing agencies raise rent on low-income households.
www.rollingstone.com
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