MICHELE STEEB: A New Chapter For America’s Homeless: Structure, Recovery, And Hope

“Today marks the beginning of the end of Housing First as the federal government’s one-size-fits-all—and failed—approach to homelessness.”

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” marking a pivotal shift in federal homelessness policy.

Following a decade of failure under our nation’s one-size-fit-all approach to homelessness—Housing First—the president’s move is a long-overdue course-correction rooted in hope, healing, and human dignity.

To understand its gravity, we must first confront the promise—and profound failure—of the policy he will begin replacing.

In 2013, President Barack Obama pledged to end homelessness within 10 years by embracing Housing First, a model that promised stability through life-long, subsidized housing, with no requirement to address underlying challenges like addiction, mental illness, or trauma.

The theory: Housing would become the springboard for recovery.

The reality: Since Housing First was institutionalized, homelessness has surged by 34%, reaching 274,224 people living unsheltered on a single night in 2024—the highest number ever recorded.

This was a foreseeable disaster. Housing First’s fatal flaw is its denial of the complexities that drive homelessness, and its stipulation that no treatment can be required as a condition of housing assistance.

During my 13-year tenure as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children, nearly all clients lacked a positive support network. A documented 77% of them struggled with addiction and 60% with mental illness. In the broader homeless population, 78% of the chronically homeless struggle with these issues.

Handing someone keys without addressing addiction, trauma, or broken support systems is pure negligence. A 14-year study out of Boston in which the homeless were placed in housing and allowed to self-determine their need for services, proved to be both deadly and ineffective. Nearly half of the housed individuals died by year five, and only 36% of those housed remained so after year five.

President Trump’s Executive Order prioritizes public safety and personal recovery by shifting federal resources toward residential and transitional programs that confront the root causes of homelessness: addiction, mental illness, and lack of structure. It calls for the reversal of legal obstacles that have restricted civil commitment and assisted outpatient treatment for those too sick to care for themselves. And it prioritizes funding to states and cities that enforce prohibitions on open-air drug use, encampments, and loitering.

It also builds on President Trump’s first-term legacy of addressing the exacerbating opioid crisis through a historic, bipartisan multi-billion-dollar investment. Through yesterday’s EO, the president expands that vision by championing communal housing environments that promote sobriety, structure, work, community, and purpose.

Critics may claim this approach stigmatizes the homeless or criminalizes poverty. They couldn’t be more wrong. True compassion refuses to stand by while the death rate among the homeless population rises by 77%  in five years. Nor does it abandon people to die slowly on the streets under the false pretense of “personal autonomy.”

It acknowledges a painful truth: Many suffering from addiction and mental illness also suffer from anosognosia— a condition that robs them of the ability to recognize their own illness, and we must assist them in making sound decisions for themselves.

Real compassion recognizes the fundamental human needs of safety, structure, healing, and connection. It meets people where they are— offering pathways to healing and growth that come with expectations for growth and accountability.

Treatment-first models, including civil commitment and judicial diversion courts, are not punitive. They affirm that every life has value and that change is not only possible—but necessary—for both the individual and society.

Equally critical is the order’s insistence on accountability.

We must instill responsibility and accountability at every level of the homeless system—from individuals to non-profits to government agencies. That begins with requiring rigorous oversight of how taxpayer dollars are spent. The administration’s directive to tie funding to measurable outcomes ensures that billions in federal investments are no longer wasted on programs that fail to deliver.

For too long, the burden of ineffective policy has fallen squarely on the shoulders of the homeless themselves, as well as on businesses and communities struggling under the weight of rising addiction, encampments, and lawlessness.

They now have a federal partner focused on recovery and order.

The Discovery Institute and I, along with a host of other like-minded advocates, have been working toward this moment for nearly a decade.  As practitioners and policy leaders, we understand the devastating human toll of a policy that was always destined to fail. Not because of ill intent, but because it ignored the most basic human needs: safety, structure, community, accountability, and purpose.

President Trump’s Executive Order is a turning point— an offer of sanity, hope, and humanity to a system that has been utterly devoid of it.

But this is not the end of the work. It is only the beginning.

For over a decade, the federal Housing First mandate dismantled programs designed to help people heal—mental health infrastructure, recovery programs, transitional housing, and accountability-driven models of care.

We must now rebuild. We must restore a homelessness system that sees the whole person—not just their lack of housing—but their potential to recover, grow, and prosper. The launching point is the policy that calls us not just to house, but to heal.

Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @ DiscoveryCWP.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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