Trump executive order on homelessness brings uncertainty to Oregon

President Donald Trump wants cities to force treatment on people with severe mental illness or addiction who are living outside. An executive order signed on Thursday aims to remove “vagrant” individuals from streets across the country and place them in long-term institutional settings to “restore public order.”

It’s hard to immediately know what kind of impact the sweeping, imprecise order will have on Oregonians. But those who’ve spent years advocating for Oregonians who are the focus of Trump’s order called it misguided.

“People with serious mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than to be a danger to anyone,” said Jake Cornett, executive director and CEO of Disability Rights Oregon. “If we really wanted to make our communities safer, we’d be investing billions in behavioral health services.”

The president’s order came as Oregon cities are navigating new state policies around homelessness and civil commitment, which is the legal process for forcing people into medical care when they pose a risk to themselves or others, or they are unable to provide their own basic needs.

Last month, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill that makes it easier to involuntarily commit people. For example, civil commitment used to require that potential risks from a mental illness be “imminent” to warrant civil commitment. The updated law removes that standard, which has been accused of keeping people from getting help.

Trump’s new civil commitment order is more explicitly directed at people living without shelter. Not only does it apply to those who are a risk to themselves or others, but it also includes committing people who “are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.”

National homeless advocacy groups say this signals the administration’s desire to treat homelessness like a crime.

“This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet,” said Jessie Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center. “The safest communities are those with the most housing and resources, not those that make it a crime to be poor or sick.”

Trump’s order also directs federal agencies to withhold grant dollars from jurisdictions that rely on programs characterized as “housing first.” This model focuses on providing housing to people experiencing homelessness to establish stability before introducing substance abuse treatment, mental health care or other services. The order instructs agencies to instead steer money to states and cities with programs that require sobriety and treatment before housing – and that enforce public camping bans.

Trump’s order comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court changed federal law in a way that makes it easier to penalize homeless people for resting on public land. While an Oregon law puts limits on broad public camping bans, the federal ruling has inspired cities across the state to rethink their policies around homelessness.

For years, Portland-area officials have disagreed over whether to prioritize “housing first” programs over shelters and camping penalties as a response to the region’s homelessness crisis.

Multnomah County and Portland share a joint strategy to halve the region’s unsheltered population by 2026, which focuses both on opening new shelters and building housing. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, however, has spent months focused on a strategy to rapidly open new overnight shelters with a more ambitious goal to end unsheltered homelessness by December. That plan comes with a clear goal to begin enforcing the city’s public camping ban after the shelters are open.

Wilson gave testimony in support of the state’s changes to civil commitment in April, noting that access to treatment has been too rigid, making it harder for people to exit homelessness. His office declined to comment on Trump’s executive order Thursday, noting that they needed more time to conduct a legal analysis.

Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said the county also needs time to evaluate the order, but called the order “political bluster.”

“While Trump tries to bring us backwards, we’re committed to a future that treats everyone with basic human dignity,” Vega Pederson told OPB. “We will continue to work with our partners to expand treatment options and thoughtfully examine our civil commitment laws.”

Some in the Portland region agree with the order’s direction. Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West disagrees with the housing first model.

“Maybe housing fourth or fifth,” he said. “But first we need to connect people with treatment and services. We need to meet people where they’re at.”

As a nurse, West said he’s acutely aware of how underresourced the state’s behavioral health structure is. He sees an opportunity for the federal government to help bolster those programs.

“We are in a state that has decided to be contentious with the administration,” West said. “But how do we find common ground to solve local problems? We may have to align with the federal government to make this happen.”

Marisa Zapata, director of the Portland State University Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, said the order will undermine years of local work to address homelessness under a housing-first strategy.

“Managing a serious mental illness or substance use disorder – you can’t do that without a stable place to live,” Zapata said. “We need housing and supportive services that are actually going to help people.”

She said Trump’s order relies on flawed data. The order claims that the “overwhelming majority” of people living outside are addicted to drugs, have a mental disorder or both. According to research from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about 17% of the country’s homeless population in 2023 abused substances. And 2022 data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that 21% of homeless people have a serious mental health condition.

Relying on incorrect data allows the public to make false assumptions about people living outside, Zapata said.

“It just feeds into the stereotype that everyone has these serious issues and they’re running rampant over the city and they’re dangerous,” she said. “I think it also sets up an argument for rounding people up into camps or institutions.”

Trump’s order drops weeks after Congress passed a domestic policy bill that included deep cuts to entitlement programs like Medicaid and SNAP, which benefit low-income Americans. Chris Bouneff, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the order’s impact on Oregonians will likely be worsened by these cuts.

“The same population they purport to be helping via this executive order will be the population that will lose Medicaid,” Bouneff said. “I would expect homelessness and untreated serious mental illness to increase due to cuts to Medicaid.”

Oregon, Multnomah County and Portland have all signed onto various lawsuits against previous executive orders issued by the Trump administration this year, but it’s unclear if any jurisdiction will take action against the latest requirements coming from the White House. The Oregon Attorney General’s office told OPB it is still reviewing the order.