Newsom’s Office Blasts Trump’s Homelessness Order as a Harmful ‘Imitation’

President Donald Trump’s executive order promising to crack down on street homelessness across the country drew prompt criticism from service providers in California and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which called it a harmful imitation of the state’s approach.

The order, signed Thursday, also calls for increased institutionalization of people with mental illness and promises to defund the state’s — and nation’s — longstanding “housing first” policy, among other provisions.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom’s office, derided Trump’s order as “more focused on creating distracting headlines and settling old scores than producing any positive impact.” Still, she acknowledged it resembled the governor’s own approach, which has emphasized clearing street encampments and bolstering mental health and drug abuse treatment.

In 2024, there were more than 187,000 people experiencing homelessness in California, a 3% increase over the previous year. But, Gallegos argued, the state has outperformed the nation, which saw an 18% increase during the same time period.

“Last year, the governor issued an executive order addressing encampments that was based on the law and the facts, not harmful stereotypes and ineffective public policy,” she told KQED in an email. “But, his imitation (even poorly executed) is the highest form of flattery.”

Trump’s order comes as the Department of Housing and Urban Development has asked local governments to reapply for federal Continuum of Care funding for fiscal year 2025 — a critical grant program that serves as the “backbone” of the homelessness response system, said Katie Barnett with the policy organization All Home.

In the past fiscal year, local organizations and agencies in California received nearly $683 million in Continuum of Care grants, according to HUD. Most of that funding is allocated based on certain quantitative factors, such as the number of people experiencing homelessness and a region’s success in getting and keeping people housed, said Vivian Wan, CEO of the nonprofit Abode Services.

But part of the grant application is judged competitively on how well it hews to federal policy, she said. For years, that’s meant following the “housing first” model — an approach first adopted by George W. Bush’s administration. It essentially means providing housing without requiring that someone be enrolled in substance abuse or mental health treatment, though those services are typically offered.

The new executive order appears to end that practice, requiring recipients of federal funding to ensure people in their programs with mental illness or substance abuse disorders use services “as a condition of participation.”

But Wan said it’s yet unclear what that will look like in practice.

“Does that mean we do drug testing?” she asked. “Do we ask people, ‘Are you sober?’ The devil is in the details.”

All Home Director of Policy Susannah Parsons called the order “a grab bag of some of the worst ideas out there for addressing homelessness.” Amie Fishman, executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, described it as a policy rooted in “cruelty, fear, and punishment.” But other observers have welcomed the move.

Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the conservative Cicero Institute, called it “a huge step in the right direction.”

He pointed to Los Angeles, where seven unhoused people, on average, died each day in 2023 — a rate that’s 4.5 times higher than the general population. Drug- and alcohol-related overdoses accounted for 45% of those deaths, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“We’ve known for years that homelessness isn’t just about housing but that it’s about folks who’ve got serious illnesses, addictions, mental health challenges, behavioral health challenges,” Webster said. “This is a humanitarian crisis on the streets of some of our largest cities, and we’ve ignored it for far too long.”

Newsom’s own executive order last year directing state agencies to clear encampments from state land, along with his calls earlier this year for cities to do the same, is an admission that the status quo isn’t working, Webster argued.

“California, because they are impacted the most from other states in the country, they’ve got to figure out how to do things differently,” Webster said, adding that’s meant “focusing more on the provision of treatment, focusing more on the fact that encampments are dangerous for everybody.”

Newsom also pushed for the adoption of CARE Court, an alternative mental health court designed to assist people with untreated schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, and Proposition 1, which required counties to dedicate more money to housing and programs for people experiencing homelessness with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.

But Julie Lo, deputy director of programs with the advocacy group Housing California, said CARE Court’s approach to treatment is philosophically different from Trump’s executive order: The state’s process is centered on community-based treatment, emphasizing empowerment and allowing family members and behavioral health providers to be part of the discussion for court-ordered treatment.

Lo pointed to multiple studies showing encampment sweeps can be ineffective in decreasing homelessness and increasing public safety, and said that if the executive order is trying to achieve that goal, “this is certainly not the path.”

“We’ve seen over and over that sweeping encampments and increasing enforcement or forcing people into institutional settings — it doesn’t reduce homelessness,” she said. “It moves people around and makes it harder for them to access services. And really, it creates a cycle of trauma with no path to stability.”

Beth Stokes, executive director of Episcopal Community Services San Francisco, worries the order threatens to undo decades of progress in the movement to end homelessness.

“We are deeply troubled by the administration’s executive order, which abandons compassionate and evidence-based programs, like harm reduction and housing first, and replaces them with cruel policies such as forced treatment and criminalizing poor people for being unhoused,” she said in a statement. “Instead of investing in solutions we know work, this policy punishes people for the system’s failures.”