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\n Rachelle Ellison spent 17 years sleeping on the streets of Washington, DC, cycling in and out of jails and hospitals.\n <\/p>\n
\n She finally moved into an apartment in 2008, thanks to a rental voucher with mental health treatment and support services attached through a non-profit organization.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOnce I got the housing stabilization and the foundation underneath my feet, I was able to work on myself,\u201d Ellison said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Ellison benefited from Housing First, a policy that moves chronically homeless people into permanent housing, without requiring them to be sober or in treatment beforehand. Housing First programs then offer services for drug abuse, mental illness, education and employment.\n <\/p>\n
\n Housing First has enjoyed bipartisan support for more than two decades. But the Trump administration wants to cut funding, claiming the model is ineffective, contributing to \u201ccrime and disorder\u201d and the record number of people sleeping on the streets. Instead, Trump wants to fund programs with stiffer sobriety or work requirements, and commit more homeless people with mental health issues without their consent. Trump ordered federal troops to forcibly remove homeless people<\/a> from Washington, DC, this week.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s a major change for the federal government. Since the George W. Bush administration, giving people a home with social services has been the government\u2019s main policy to combat homelessness.\n <\/p>\n \n Leading researchers and homelessness advocates say the move away from Housing First will have dire consequences for people struggling and unhoused.\n <\/p>\n \n After landing an apartment, Ellison began treatment for drug use and mental health disorders, stemming from abuse as a child. For years, she worked to maintain sobriety with a team of mental health and drug treatment counselors.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI had to fail quite a few times, and then finally I got tired, and I had a roof over my head,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been clean and sober ever since.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Ellison, now a national advocate<\/a> on homelessness, said that \u201cHousing First actually saved my life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \u2018We did that and it failed\u2019<\/p>\n \n Housing First emerged in the early 2000s, replacing<\/a> a treatment-first model of addressing homelessness. The approach mandated people become sober or participate in programs before they got housing, which was often emergency shelters or transitional housing.\n <\/p>\n \n Several studies<\/a> have found that Housing First programs offer greater long-term housing stability than treatment-first, and may even lower overall costs by reducing hospital and ER visits, according to a HUD review of evidence in 2023.\n <\/p>\n \n The Department of Veterans Affairs has used Housing First<\/a> to decrease veterans\u2019 homelessness by 55% since 2009. Houston, Denver and other cities have successfully used the approach to drive down homelessness.\n <\/p>\n \n But a White House executive order<\/a> last month seeks to bring back the old model, directing federal agencies to end funding for organizations that offer housing to people without first requiring treatment for substance abuse or serious mental illnesses.\n <\/p>\n \n The Trump administration is \u201cproposing to turn the clock back to transitional housing model of 1990s. We did that and it failed. It\u2019s the whole reason Housing First came about,\u201d said Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania whose research on chronic homelessness<\/a> laid the groundwork for Housing First programs.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat the administration will find out is exactly what happened before: The people who need the most extensive supports get evicted\u201d from transitional housing, Culhane said.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s executive order also calls for local jurisdictions to use civil commitment laws to remove people living on the streets who \u201ccannot care for themselves\u201d or \u201cpose risks to themselves or the public.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The administration wants to shift these people into \u201clong-term institutional settings,\u201d but it may run into a shortage of mental health hospital beds<\/a> in America. Trump has also cut funding for Medicaid<\/a> and grants<\/a> for drug addiction and mental health programs, which may make it harder for people to get treatment.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is a total lack of investment in solutions we do know work,\u201d said Lara Pukatch, the chief advocacy officer at Miriam\u2019s Kitchen, a housing and social services nonprofit in Washington, DC. \u201cThe executive order certainly doesn\u2019t address issues of homelessness or make access to health and mental health care any easier.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Mass street homelessness is a relatively recent phenomenon in America.\n <\/p>\n \n A number of factors contributed, including de-institutionalization without provisions for housing or social services starting in the 1950s, government cuts to housing, and an underfunded, patchwork mental health care system.\n <\/p>\n \n Results of the treatment-first approach during the 1980s and 1990s \u201cwere not very positive,\u201d Dennis Culhane said. \u201cPeople who entered were often discharged for failing to comply with sobriety requirements, and so they ended up back on the streets.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n George W. Bush\u2019s administration began to tackle chronic homelessness, spurred by advocates and Culhane\u2019s research that found New York City was spending<\/a> $40,000 a year for each chronically homeless person due to time in detox centers, prisons and hospitals. Supportive housing reduced costs annually by $16,000.\n <\/p>\n \n In 2003, Bush announced a 10-year plan to end homelessness as part of its \u201ccompassionate conservatism\u201d<\/a> agenda, adopting Housing First as the model.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe shift came during the Bush administration, where they began to recognize that there was real value in addressing chronic homelessness,\u201d said Frederick Shack, the CEO of Urban Pathways, a housing and social services provider in New York City. \u201cYou can do that best by helping people address their core housing need and surrounding them with services.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The Obama administration continued the approach and in 2009 launched a goal of ending veteran homelessness built around Housing First. Congress that year passed legislation that accelerated funding to Housing First programs.\n <\/p>\n \n The first Trump administration initially continued the Housing First approach, praising the model.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n But the administration began shifting its position as unsheltered homelessness became more visible, especially in Democratic-run cities on the West Coast.\n <\/p>\n![\"Rachelle](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-2201097091.jpg\")
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gettyimages-1212255567.jpg\")
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