Ramping Up the Criminalization of Homelessness Is Inhumane and Counterproductive: There is a lot to be said about what is wrong with President Trump’s declaration of a crime emergency in D.C., the deployment of federal law enforcement and members of the National Guard on the streets of the District, and the call for a return to institutionalization as the primary response to unsheltered homelessness. Racism, xenophobia, and willful ignorance of crime data trends are all at play. It is also worth underscoring the role that fearmongering about unhoused people and attacks on encampments have played in this saga. Just as violent crime has actually been declining in D.C. in the recent past, homelessness has as well, dropping by 9% from 2024 to 2025. However, that decline does not change the fact that the level of homelessness in D.C. is intolerably high. D.C. still has a higher rate of homelessness than that of any state. Although the fact that rural areas tend to have lower rates of homelessness than urban areas may make that unsurprising, it still suggests that there is a lot of work to be done. We also know how to do that work. Providing deeply affordable housing, without making sobriety or acceptance of supportive services a precondition for eligibility, and making robust, voluntary supportive services available works, and it works for just about everyone. Due to trauma and distrust with systems, some people may need a little bit more convincing through a patient approach to street outreach, but there is no evidence that there is a population for which Housing First does not work. The persistence of homelessness despite our knowledge of what works is largely a reflection of underinvestment in affordable housing and supportive services and the skyrocketing cost of housing, not an underlying problem with the model. Not only is Housing First not what President Trump is implementing, what he is actually doing is going to make it harder to do things the right way in the future. When individuals are displaced from encampments, that can disrupt the relationships that outreach workers are beginning to build with them, both decreasing trust and by making it hard to impossible for outreach workers to find the people whom they are trying to assist. If law enforcement arrests unhoused people when dismantling encampments, the criminal records thrust upon them make it more likely that landlords will refuse to rent to them. And the destruction of their personal belongings may result in the loss of key documents that may be important when applying for employment or housing. What President Trump is doing has no potential to make things better and a high risk of making matters much worse, but local and state officials who are committed to ending homelessness do have the tools for doing so. It is up to them to adopt and implement effective, evidence-based policies like Housing First at scale. Listen to our Executive Director, Thomas Silverstein, discuss this on WPFW’s Community Watch & Comment here.
PRRAC at OIRA: On both August 11 and 13 (the latter in partnership with our coalition allies from the Alliance for Housing Justice), PRRAC staff participated in Executive Order 12866 meetings with staff from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget regarding a notice of proposed rulemaking that is currently pending at OIRA. Although we have yet to see the proposed rule, which concerns the eligibility of families with mixed immigration status for certain federally-assisted housing, the expectation is that it will mirror the harmful provisions of a 2019 proposed rule. Consistent with statute, HUD’s current regulations rightfully allow mixed-status families to reside in subsidized units with prorated assistance. Changing that status quo would tear families apart and increase homelessness while decreasing the number of families that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is able to serve. PRRAC expects to spend quite a bit more time (virtually) at OIRA in the very near future, with meetings also scheduled on a final rule regarding the standard for disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act and a proposed rule regarding time limits and work requirements in assisted housing programs. Especially for rulemakings where the Trump Administration sidesteps notice-and-comment requirements, the Executive Order 12866 meeting process is a rare outlet to penetrate the Administration’s echo chamber and expose them to empirically-grounded dissenting views.
Other news and resources
ICMYI – State High Court Rulings Regarding Source of Income Discrimination Laws: Recently, the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Maryland Supreme Court both issued favorable decisions regarding source of income discrimination laws. On July 30, 2025, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the source of income discrimination ordinance of the City of Minneapolis in the face of a challenge from landlords on both takings and state preemption grounds. On July 28, 2025, the Maryland Supreme Court held that a Housing Choice Voucher tenant’s claim that a landlord’s policy of requiring applicants to have 2.5 times the total rent (as opposed to the tenant’s rental obligation) in income had an unjustified disparate impact could proceed past summary judgment. The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights followed up the decision by issuing guidance articulating its position that the practice is unlawful. PRRAC participated as amicus in both cases.
Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act in Washington, DC: A brief history: Our close partner Brook Hill of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and his co-authors Dominic Moulden and Judith Keller have a helpful history of D.C.’s landmark Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) in the most recent issue of the New School’s Radical Housing Journal. TOPA is a powerful tool for protecting tenants’ rights and creating a pathway for properties to transition to use as social housing.
