D.C.’s homeless need housing, not jail, says legal advocate wary of Trump plan

President Trump wants unhoused people living in Washington D.C. to get off the streets and into shelters or out of the city altogether. But his administration has so far offered few details on how it will achieve this goal.

Without a detailed plan on tackling homelessness in the nation’s capital, advocates like Amber Harding, executive director of the nonprofit Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, worry the focus will be on criminalizing those who have nowhere to go.

“Everything they do is outside and in public. They are the segment of the community that is the most scrutinized for criminal behavior,” Harding said in an interview with Morning Edition, noting that more than a dozen police forces operate around Washington.

In announcing efforts to crack down on crime and homelessness in the nation’s capital, Trump said, “There are many places that they can go, and we’re going to help them as much as you can help. But they’ll not be allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to see.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that the homeless will be offered a chance to go to a shelter or get addiction or mental health services and that those who refuse “will be subjected to fines or jail time.”

Successfully rehabilitating the unhoused cannot happen without getting them into housing, Harding says.

“[Housing] is cheaper than jail. It is cheaper than institutions. It is not effective to put someone in jail for a night,” Harding says. “Where are they going when they get out? They’re going back to the street. You haven’t solved the problem.”

Harding says local organizations did not have shelter space available the day Trump announced plans to target the unhoused, though local officials made some 60 beds available since. The city administrator for the D.C. Government Kevin Donahue said a building is available to house as many as 200 people, the Associated Press reports.

Harding spoke to NPR’s Michel Martin on what the local reaction has been to Trump’s announcement and legal concerns organizations that work with the unhoused might have.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Michel Martin: So how many people are we talking about and where do they tend to be?

Amber Harding: I think we have around 800 or 900 people who are unsheltered, who are living outside. We do not have any large tent cities. We do not have large groups of homeless people in any sort of concentrated way. We have people who haven’t been able to access shelter or housing resources making due where they can.

Editor’s note: There are about 800 unsheltered people living on Washington’s streets, according to nonprofit group The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness.

Martin: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told NPR correspondent Tamara Keith that people will be given the option to leave their encampment taken to homeless shelters or offered addiction or mental health services, and that if they refuse “they will be susceptible to fines or jail time.” And she cited what she said are preexisting laws that haven’t been enforced. First of all, what’s your understanding of this?

Harding: If I say to you, you have to go to shelter or take these services or some sort of involuntary treatment — even though you don’t qualify for involuntary commitment — and you say, no, there’s nothing in the law that says I get to arrest you. That is not something that exists in our law.

Martin: Do the people you work with who are unhoused at the moment, are they aware of this effort to remove people?

Harding: Outreach workers, including our outreach team, have been doing their best to walk a line of informing people about the risks without fear mongering. There has been pretty much zero coordination with the local government on this. The things you and I do in our home are perfectly lawful. And if we did many of those things outside of our home, they would not be lawful. I can have a glass of wine with my dinner. I’m not violating any law. If I have a glass of wine outside, I can be arrested for open container. And so it’s a broader body of law that impacts people who are living outside.

Martin: The president speaks of things in a very blunt way. At its core, he’s saying people shouldn’t be living on the street. Is there a difference of opinion with the advocacy community around this? There has been a time in this country when some advocates considered living on the street a lifestyle choice. Is this a disagreement about the best way to move people off the street, or is there a philosophical difference about whether people should be living on the street at all?

Harding: I think there is a possible difference of opinion as to what the consequences should be for that choice and a difference of education and experience in what leads to someone deciding to sleep on the street. There is a lot of focus on the individual without an understanding of the systemic forces that lead to someone having to sleep outside. I don’t hear any advocates say that it is a good or a positive thing for anyone to be homeless or for anyone to sleep on the street. I think it is a far cry from saying we all agree no one should be on the street to jump to institutionalizing criminalizing people who are on the street when they have no other choices.

Martin: If the administration moves forward with this plan and you’re telling us that the city is already scrambling, what are groups like yours going to do?

Harding: When you say this plan, it makes it sound like there’s a plan, and I don’t know the plan. It depends on whether they do it in a lawful or an unlawful way. If they do it in an unlawful way, we will do our best to stop it. If they do it in a lawful way, we’ll do our best to get our clients out of harm’s way.

This digital article was edited by Treye Green. The radio version was edited by Lisa Thomson and produced by Paige Waterhouse.