Federal agencies have spent the past year greenlighting states to expand civil commitment of homeless individuals with mental illness or substance use disorders, the result of an executive order President Donald Trump signed to move people off the streets and redirect billions in homelessness funding away from Housing First policies.
The order has already triggered new state laws criminalizing public camping, a Justice Department opinion making it easier to keep mentally ill people institutionalized, and a sweeping overhaul of how the Department of Housing and Urban Development distributes more than $4 billion in grants — though the funding changes remain tied up in federal court.
Civil Commitment Becomes Federal Priority
Trump’s order directed the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services to prioritize funding for states that carry out what the administration calls “maximally flexible civil commitment” of individuals with mental illness who “pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.” It also called on DOJ to reverse consent decrees that impede involuntary psychiatric treatment.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, roughly 30% of those experiencing chronic homelessness have a serious mental illness, while two-thirds have a substance use disorder or other chronic health condition. The administration argues that restoring “public order” requires committing homeless people to “long-term institutional settings for humane treatment.”
A June Justice Department legal opinion built on the order by making it easier for states to keep individuals with mental illness institutionalized rather than provide in-home or community-based care. Devon Kurtz, policy director at the Cicero Institute — the conservative think tank founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale that advised the White House on the order — said it gives states “considerably more discretion” over psychiatric care.
“This executive order was really a signal to those agencies that they have to revisit all of these key touch points that are creating these unnecessary burdens and ceilings on state experimentation with policy,” Kurtz told CBS News. He argued that Housing First and similar approaches have “been rewarding the places that have done the worst.”
States Move on Encampments and Involuntary Treatment
The order has prompted a wave of state-level action. Utah approved more than $43 million in spending earlier this year to target “high utilizers” — people who repeatedly cycle through shelters and jail — backed by a new law allowing those individuals to be placed under the supervision of the state’s Division of Adult Probation and Parole.
Indiana and Louisiana both passed bills this year making it a crime to sleep overnight or camp on public property. Louisiana’s HB 211, dubbed the “Streets to Success Act,” punishes first-time violators with fines up to $500 and up to six months in jail. Eligible individuals can avoid jail by enrolling in a new “Homelessness Court Program” that supervises participants for a year and provides substance abuse treatment, mental health services, job training and housing assistance. Participants who complete the program can have their convictions erased; those who don’t risk jail.
State law says participants “may be confined in a treatment facility” or released on a probationary basis, with courts empowered to impose rehabilitation conditions. The National Homelessness Law Center called the bill “one of the cruelest, most extreme anti-homeless bills” in the country. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry defended the approach, saying the courts would help “start removing the homeless off of our streets and into the places that they belong.”
Shaina Bessonet, a Louisiana dental hygienist who experienced homelessness from January 2022 to March 2026, testified against the bill. “Just because someone is homeless, because they don’t have a place to sleep, doesn’t give anybody the right to take them and punish them just for not having a place to go,” she said. “It’s not fixing the problem, it’s making it worse.”
Housing First Under Siege at HUD
The administration’s broader funding vision remains blocked by litigation. Officials claim the executive order has already produced $700 million in HHS funding for addiction, mental illness and homelessness programs, though with restrictions on use for Housing First or “harm reduction” policies. The bigger fight centers on HUD, where more than $4 billion in proposed homelessness grants has been stuck in court.
Housing First — which provides non-conditional access to housing without requiring sobriety or treatment compliance — has been used by HUD and other agencies since 2013 and was first adopted as a federal strategy under President George W. Bush in 2004. HUD’s 2025 homelessness report cited a roughly 27% increase in homelessness since 2013.
The 2026 HUD budget cuts permanent supportive housing from about $3 billion to $2.4 billion compared with 2024, while shifting $1.3 billion toward new transitional and temporary housing programs — up from approximately $600,000 in the 2024 budget. A lawsuit citing the National Alliance to End Homelessness warns the shift could push 97,000 people out of permanent supportive housing.
Attorneys general from 21 states and the National Alliance to End Homelessness sued HUD in July over the latest funding plan, after a separate legal challenge successfully blocked HUD’s 2025 plan in April. HUD Secretary Scott Turner dismissed the 97,000 figure as “fear-mongering” and called the litigation blocking “long-overdue changes” absurd.
“No one is being kicked out on the streets,” Turner said in a statement, arguing the plan would provide “more funding than ever before” and give advocates “greater flexibility to invest in the housing and services their neighborhoods need.”
Critics Warn of Cost and Coercion
Jennifer Mathis, deputy director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health and a former Biden-era official in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said civil commitment could prove more expensive than long-term housing and should be treated as “a last resort.” She said the executive order “created an environment where states felt either pressured or permitted to focus on more coercive strategies, to focus less on housing as a solution.”
“The basic notion behind the executive order seems to be that these people who are unhoused don’t deserve housing,” Mathis said. “They’re either criminals or they’re problem people, and we should basically be forcing them into treatment because it’s just their own fault.” She called that premise “just wrong at its core.”
What Happens Next
The immediate battleground remains the federal courts. With 21 state attorneys general challenging HUD’s 2026 funding plan and a prior lawsuit already blocking the 2025 plan, the administration’s ability to redirect billions away from permanent supportive housing will depend on judicial rulings expected over the coming year. A ruling against HUD could freeze the transitional-housing shift and preserve Housing First as the dominant federal model.
More states are likely to consider Louisiana-style homelessness courts and encampment bans as the Justice Department continues rolling back consent decrees. Watch for additional DOJ opinions clarifying the scope of civil commitment authority, and for HHS to attach new conditions to the $700 million in funding tied to the executive order. The tension between treatment-first and housing-first camps will shape federal homelessness policy well beyond Trump’s current term.
— Sofia Alvarez, government desk, AXO News