Trump’s “Homelessness Solution” Isn’t About Help— It’s About Hiding The Problem… Or Worse

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Señor TACO’S Real Plan For The Homeless

I have a nice house, plenty of room, a salt water swimming pool… but there were times in my life— more than one— when I was homeless, times when I depended on food stamps and other peoples' generosity to make ends meet. Investing in me was a good idea for the government. I’ve gladly repaid that investment back many times over. Señor TACO was born into a crooked, wealthy family, a grandfather who exploted women in the whore houses he ran and a father who set an example for young Trumpanzee by breaking laws with alacrity while accumulating a vast fortune. And the Trump we’re stuck with now has never hidden his disdain for people experiencing homelessness. But now he’s turning that disgust into official policy. In an executive order signed yesterday, he called on states and cities to “remove vagrant individuals” from public spaces and redirect them into “treatment centers.” The order, which reads like a repackaged Reagan-era crackdown, promises— flimsily— funding for states that comply and subtly encourages a return to institutional warehousing of the poor, addicted, and mentally ill.

If you know anything about Trump, you're already aware that this isn’t about care, compassion or public health. As always with him, it’s about optics. It’s about sweeping human suffering out of sight before foreign dignitaries drive through Washington or before swing voters in the suburbs head to the polls. It’s about criminalizing poverty again, in the most literal way, and calling it “public safety.”

Trump has spent years mocking homeless encampments and fantasizing about reopening “insane asylums.” Now, that fantasy is about to become reality with the executive order he signed yesterday, making his fantasies federal policy. The language of the order is drenched in dehumanization: “vagrant criminals,”  “dangerous street people,” “rat-infested encampments.” These aren't words of a leader seeking to heal a crisis. They are the words of a monster weaponizing fear for political gain.

And let’s not miss the structural cruelty baked into the fine print: the federal government will prioritize grants to states that already engage in aggressive sweeps, crackdowns on loitering, bans on urban camping, and increased surveillance of “undesirables.” In other words, the states that treat unhoused people as disposable will be rewarded.

We’ve seen this before. In the 1980s, deinstitutionalization without adequate social investment led to an explosion in homelessness. Trump’s plan appears to be the dark inverse: reinstitutionalization without rights, agency or oversight. It sounds Orwellian because it is.

No serious person disputes that America has an uncomfortable, difficult-to-solve crisis of untreated mental illness and substance abuse. But Trump’s answer is mass internment, not treatment. It’s incarceration by another name. The goal isn’t recovery; it’s removal.

The Supreme Court’s ruling last year, upholding the right of cities to fine or jail people for camping in public when no shelter beds are available, opened the floodgates. Trump is rushing through them. I’m sure we don’t have to tell you that this will disproportionately impact Black, brown, and disabled people. This will shred what little remains of civil liberties for the unhoused, many of whom are veterans. This is going to cost the lives of people Trump has no respect for, people he has no compassion for. Jesus was essentially unhoused himself: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in... Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

In Judaism, The Torah and Talmud make care for the poor an obligation, not a choice: "If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself... you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you." And in the Muslim faith, charity (zakat) is one of the Five Pillars of Islam— a religious duty. Homelessness is seen as a social failing, a collective responsibility ignored. Across all faiths, the consistent message is that the moral measure of a society is how it treats the poor, the unhoused, the sick, and the forgotten. Not only is helping them considered virtuous— failing to do so is viewed as a grave moral failing. Trump’s and MAGA's approach doesn’t just violate modern human rights standards, it runs counter to the teachings of every major religious tradition.

It really wouldn’t surprise me if this is just the start of a broader authoritarian push to punish visible poverty, dissent and nonconformity under the guise of “order.” Trump’s America is not one where everyone gets help. It’s one where the vulnerable are hidden, locked away and forgotten.

Emily Berge, the progressive Democrat running for the western Wisconsin congressional seat occupied by Trump ally Derrick Van Orden, is the Eau Claire city council president, in effect, the mayor. This morning she told us that last night she had joined her local Point in Time count “where we walked the city streets just past midnight trying to reach those experiencing homelessness. In the training leading up to the ‘PIT’ we were instructed what to do if we found children or families living in their cars. As a mom this hit hard. Our small group only ran into a few people, probably due to it being storming out and people tucked away to avoid the weather. Twelve hours later I see that Trump signed an executive order demanding that cities criminalize homelessness and force people into treatment.”

She told us that “Some may think it's easy to ‘remove the homeless from the streets’: ‘they need a job’ they say, ‘don't have services’, they say, ‘arrest them’ they say. These are all things I have heard as a city leader. As a Mental Health Counselor with an undergraduate degree in Human Development and Family Studies, I know this is not how it works. I won't get into the nitty gritty of trauma and human behavior but if people actually took the time to talk to someone experiencing homelessness, they would quickly see the complexity of the situation. Trump's executive order gutting housing first policies ignores data, experts, and human behavior. Forcing people into treatment is expensive— and who will pay for that? taxpayers— and it doesn't work. Arresting people because they have no  place to live also does not work... it just fills the jails with people experiencing homelessness which is very expensive and once again taxpayers will pay the bill. If our public dollars are going toward homelessness, why don't we actually use proven methods that work: housing first programs. Yes, the rate of homelessness has skyrocketed over the years, also worth noting: our housing prices have surged along with the prices of healthcare, food, transportation, etc. The rising numbers of homelessness is a symptom of an unsustainable economy where people cannot afford basic needs. We need to address the root of the problem, not punish those trying to survive.” 

She noted that the local congressman, Van Orden, “is 100% all in these cruel and senseless policies. We need leaders who will actually solve problems with compassion and common sense. I know that homelessness is hard to see and we do need to end it, but we need to focus on solutions that work, not make big statements and set everyone up for failure.” Please consider contributing to Emily Berge’s campaign here, because Trump’s executive order yesterday was based on Hitler’s 1938 “Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich (Operation Work-Shy Reich) program to remove the homeless, beggars, drug addicts, mentally ill people and pacifists from the streets, deeming them asocial, forcibly institutionalizing them in Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen and making them wear black triangles on their prison uniforms.