Posted on 03/26/2025 3:49:33 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation's leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis.
"Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares," Mr. Trump said in a presidential campaign video. "For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage."
Now that he's in office, the assault on "Housing First" has begun.
White House officials haven't announced a formal policy but are opening the door to a treatment-first agenda, while engineering a major overhaul of the housing and social service programs that form the backbone of the homelessness response system that cities and counties across the nation depend on. Nearly $4 billion was earmarked last year alone. But now, Scott Turner, who heads Mr. Trump's Department of Housing and Urban Development — the agency responsible for administering housing and homelessness funding — has outlined massive funding cuts and called for a review of taxpayer spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Common sense is back in style.
The ‘homeless industry’ is a big part of the problem. Trump trying something different will be a great comfort to the families of people caught in that evil system.
It has never felt just or compassionate that we as society, chose to let overwhelmingly addicted and mentally ill homeless the “freedom?” To choose poorly and live out of doors in all weather and in crime-vulnerable hell hole encampments so we could self righteously shutter closed mental hospitals to them. Always seemed cruel and dismissive, since we have ever since spent just as much or more to beg these addicted and mentally ill to rejoin the system we had kicked them out of. Change my mind here?!!!
Tough love is still love. Bless President Trump.
My wife was a psych nurse for 20 years, and one of the greatest tragedies was court rulings that basically put the mentally ill back in the community, because their “civil rights “ were being abused by having them in institutions.
What has happened to them since then is truly tragic.
Not saying the old system was great, but the alternative has not been good.
Current approach: Ignoring the homeless
New approach: Helping the homeless
Housing the homeless has never worked which is why there are so many of them.
Treatment of mentally ill people is certainly a good thing. But where are the necessary mental institutions? Where are the health care professionals? Won’t it take years, if not decades, to train them? And is it even possible to successfully treat people who refuse to be treated?
Don’t get me wrong, i think the President is right. I just don’t think the problem can be solved in a few years, and it’s going to be even more expensive than housing the homeless.
So, not hiring more government bean-counters to fatten government? How mean-spiritied is that to the Democrat machine!?!?!
The old system was not great but it was much better than current conditions.
Rounding them up is a beginning that needs to happen now. Also by moving them out of the cities housing will open up.
The city that I work in, it’s very diverse and it doesn’t have safe schools and the streets are not very safe. If you know what I mean, so anyway, every now and again a big multi acre field gets cleared and then hundreds of cars pull up and a bunch of white people get out and build homes from that Jimmy Carter program Habitat for Humanity. in a few days, the homes are done and then a bunch of people move into the homes and they quickly get rundown and they get graffiti and the yards are never taken care of and I always think to myself. Wow, I wish someone would give me something. But no, I wake up when it’s dark in the morning and I go to work and I work all night and I come home when it’s dark lather rinse repeat no one’s ever given me anything. it makes you resent the people that get something for nothing.
“Rounding them up is a beginning that needs to happen now. Also by moving them out of the cities housing will open up.”
I agree with you that moving them out of the cities will be healthy for them, but since they aren’t using housing, housing won’t be affected by their absence.
Mental illness alone should not be sufficient cause to institutionalize someone.
I believe the bigger problem here is that state and municipal governments have basically decriminalized much of the antisocial, pathological behavior that used to be sufficient grounds to prosecute these people and deal with them in a court of law.
C BS, as usual has it totally backwards. Giving drug addicts and the mentally ill free housing doesn't solve homelessness, it exacerbates it. That's why it's such a problem now.
“But where are the necessary mental institutions?”
They were closed by Carter and/or Reagan. Depends on who’s telling the story. Online, I’ve seen it even blamed on JFK.
Getting drugs off the streets will help .
Many are homeless because of substance abuse
This is what most homelessness is about, especially what most of us see and think of as homelessness.
People who get in a jam is what the media tries to sell us but they are not the ones on the street that we know belong in mental hospitals and treatment centers, which is the core of what we call “homelessness” or “the homeless”.
Clearing the streets of what are really “outdoor patients” shuts down the homeless perpetuation industry and makes it easier to help the few marginal working poor and motivated strugglers who get into and out of temporary jams.
If you only house them, you’re putting on a bandaid. Getting them rehabilitated builds a foundation for possibly reconstructing their lives. Of all the the things the federal govt directs funds to…. Helping american citizens raise themselves up is worth it. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.
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