Effort underway for Spokane, local governments to support Trump’s crackdown on homeless

The Trump administration is overturning the federal government’s decadelong approach to addressing homelessness, and some local officials and activists are hoping it will provide the momentum needed to enact those same reforms in Spokane and across the county.

In a July 24 executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” President Donald Trump has reframed the federal government’s approach to homelessness from a public health issue to one of public safety, arguing for the long-term institutionalization of the chronically homeless and the abolition of “Housing First” programs that have largely been the status quo since the first term of former President George W. Bush.

“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” the order begins. “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.”

“Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens,” it continues.

The Trump administration will seek to relax judicial precedent and other obstacles at the state, local and federal level that restrict the involuntary commitment of homeless people who pose a risk or who “cannot care for themselves,” “in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”

Cities could also lose out on some federal funding if they are not sufficiently stringent in their enforcement of various laws associated with homelessness and quickly clear encampments. There’s a lot at stake: Spokane’s Community Housing and Health Services department alone receives upwards of $11 million annually in federal homelessness funds, according to Dawn Kinder, the head of the city division that oversees that department.

Specifically, the order calls for federal homeless funds to be prioritized to cities that “to the maximum extent permitted by law” enforce laws against open drug use, squatting or camping on public property, enforce or adopt laws allowing for involuntary commitment, and strictly register and monitor homeless sex offenders.

Critics argue the Trump administration is reducing the homeless to dangerous criminals to justify heavy-handed law enforcement and a resurgence of the kind of institutionalization left behind by President John F. Kennedy and then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the ’60s.

“This is a blunt and oversimplified strategy that is proven to fail at reducing homelessness,” according to a recent blog post from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “One might argue that it represents the total absence of any cohesive strategy on homelessness at all. And the only way to justify it is to cynically communicate to the world that homeless people are inherently dangerous.”

But local supporters of the reforms point to a post-pandemic surge in homelessness, which has only started to decrease in the last two years, and ballooning overdose deaths, which have increased nearly 300% since 2019 – though most of these occurred among the housed, according to a February KXLY report – as evidence that the status quo has failed both the community and the homeless.

Former Mayor Nadine Woodward on Sunday, for instance, suggested that the scourge of overdose deaths could justify the deployment of the National Guard to Spokane, akin to the Trump administration’s recent actions in D.C.

Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle has taken up an effort to draft a letter of support for the reforms outlined in the July 24 executive order while also asking the White House to back up its initiative with serious funding.

“We think we can find some common ground here,” Bingle said in a Monday interview. “We do need to clean up our streets, we do need to clean up our city, and we’re going to need some real federal funding for the facilities outlined in the executive order.”

The monumental increase in capacity in mental hospitals and other institutions recommended in the executive order is going to need commensurate funding, Bingle noted.

“We need those long-term mental health facilities for those out of their mind and need much more specialized training to properly treat them,” he added. “We don’t have that infrastructure in the area. Same with long-term substance abuse treatment.”

Bingle is quick to acknowledge the stigma associated with “asylums,” and argues significant citizen oversight would be necessary to humanely implement these systems.

“But the asylum still exists,” he added. “Except now it’s the streets, or the jail, or the emergency room. We are still allowing these people to live in hellacious conditions – is this really the best place for them?”

Congressman Michael Baumgartner highlighted the effort to coalesce local buy-in at his Sunday fundraiser, honoring developer and activist Sheldon Jackson for, among other things, his efforts to get local governments on board with Trump’s executive order on homelessness.

“Sheldon is going to be working with as many local Eastern Washington elected officials that would like to write a letter of support for what President Trump is doing to make sure homeless folks are treated justly but also communities are treated justly,” Baumgartner said Sunday.

A sharp pivot

The administration is also disavowing “harm reduction” and “Housing First” programs, arguing they “only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm,” pledging that federal grant funds will not fund either.

Harm reduction programs, such as needle exchanges and safe injection sites are intended to reduce the imminent risk of transmissible diseases and overdose deaths. Spokane County does not have a publicly funded safe injection site, but the Spokane County Regional Health District does maintain a needle exchange program partially funded by the federal government.

Residents have raised concerns about discarded needles near the exchange programs and more broadly criticized them for facilitating the use of narcotics.

But Mark Springer, communicable disease investigation and prevention program manager for the Spokane Regional Health District, points to research that exchange programs reduce the rate of diseases such as HIV or Hepatitis that can be transmitted via reusing needles and argues eliminating them will not lead to fewer people using drugs.

“This is not an effort to be soft on people who are using drugs, it’s really just a best practice,” Springer said.

“And if we make harm reduction less accessible and assume that it’s going to decrease use, I think that’s a flawed assumption,” he added. “Oftentimes these people in the throes of a deep addiction, they lose their job, their housing, their family members – addiction is such a strong driver where people are losing access to the things in their life that have value.”

Comparatively, access to a clean syringe is unlikely to factor as highly in the decision making of someone facing addiction, Springer argued.

“There is just a lot of shortsightedness with this approach,” he added.

Housing First programs, in which homeless people are given stable housing upfront to enable them to then address addiction, mental health and social reintegration, have been the national standard since 2013 and were initially adopted by the Bush administration in 2004 as part of its national policy to end homelessness.

A 2020 review published in the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice found the Housing First approach decreased homelessness by 88% compared to Treatment First programs.

Previously, most homeless programs were Treatment First, which required clients to prove they were already in treatment or sober before they were provided housing, and appears to be the approach the Trump administration wants to return to.

According to the executive order, Housing First programs “deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery and self-sufficiency …”

It’s a criticism familiar to at least one local organization, the Spokane Business Association, which released a report in July authored by Robert Marbut – who served as Trump’s “homeless czar” from 2019 to 2021 – condemning Housing First as not only ineffectual but actively attracting homeless people to Spokane from out of state. The report’s data significantly contradicts the annual, standardized point-in-time counts, which Marbut also called flawed.

Bingle believes the status quo prioritizes housing those who are chronically homeless over those who could most easily get back on their feet.

“If you look at the amount of money on homelessness spent since Housing First was first implemented, I don’t think you’re going to see any substantial movement towards the good,” he argued. “You should be housing the people ready for housing first, because the folks with the most acute problems … those are going to need to be properly treated first.”

Kinder, on the other hand, believes critics of Housing First programs misunderstands them.

“People hear ‘Housing First,’ and think we’re handing out housing to anyone – we don’t have the supply to do that, for one, and all of our services funded by (the federal government) are also funding employment services, behavioral and mental health and other services meant to stabilize people,” Kinder said.

She also doubts that a return to Treatment First will produce better results.

“Most research indicates it’s hard to stay sober or in recovery when you’re on the street in constant survival mode,” she added. “People need services and housing to go hand-in-hand.”

Rubber, meet road

It’s not immediately clear how the homelessness executive order will be put into practice.

“For now it’s just rhetoric,” Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown noted in a Monday interview.

The federal government is late in sending its contracts for the latest round of homelessness funding, she said, and while the city expects those contracts will reflect the intentions of the executive order, the details remain to be seen.

“What the changes look like on the ground might not be as drastic as the executive order feels,” Kinder added.

The mayor’s office agrees with Bingle on at least one aspect of the order: If it’s going to mandate reforms, it needs to fund them.

“I would hope that, if treatment is a mandatory step for housing, that there would be funding for that,” Kinder said. “We don’t have enough treatment services for the people who already want treatment.”