Dignity Over Detention
President Trump’s “Ending Crime and Disorder on American’s Streets” executive order from July 24, 2025 is chilling. Under the guise of “law and order” this administration seems to be targeting the most vulnerable populations. This time it is unhoused people but the implications for a wider group of people are obvious. Do we have an issue with people being unable to find and keep adequate housing in this country? Yes, we cannot deny that is a rising problem. There is a misconception that being unhoused is due to laziness, weakness, or a moral failing when it is actually a lack of adequate employment and extremely limited access to affordable housing that are the main causes of homelessness. The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling opened the door to more criminalization by local authorities. Criminalizing homelessness and closing housing programs does not eliminate the issues that cause homelessness in the first place. We can look at least one community in our own state whose elected officials have blamed services for unhoused people as attracting unhoused people to the community and if those services were eliminated, that problem would go away. They even went as far as removing bus stops and requiring people to access public transit through a phone app and credit card.
