Central Pa. housing, social work experts worry about Trump’s latest executive order on homelessness

• By Jade Campos/LNP | LancasterOnline

For years, housing experts across the country have tackled homelessness with a “housing first” mindset, asserting the need to first give people a place to live before matching them with services such as mental health care or treatment for substance abuse problems.

But a new executive order by President Donald Trump, signed July 24, asks officials to abandon that practice, and local housing advocates say they worry about what that means for Lancaster County’s most vulnerable residents.

Titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” Trump’s order encourages communities to sweep homeless camps and put unhoused people in mental health hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, even without consent.

“It’s just going to make the environment more unstable,” said Rebecca Saner, a street outreach worker with local nonprofit Hand Up Partners. Taking people off the streets where they live, Saner said, amounts to “forced displacement,” a practice she said is linked to higher mortality rates and disruptions in outreach and medical care.

Trump’s executive order on homelessness is not a mandate to local or state governments. Rather, it directs federal departments — Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development among them — to promote this type of homelessness response. States and communities that follow suit by prohibiting encampments and moving people to treatment centers may be prioritized for federal funding and grant opportunities.

Shelby Nauman, CEO of the housing nonprofit Tenfold, said Trump’s order placing treatment above housing goes against years of work that has proven successful.

“When you think about it, if you’re not housed, how can you make progress in other parts of your life when you’re trying to rebuild?” Nauman said.

Nauman also took issue with what she said are “assumptions” Trump made in his order. The language of the order, she said, perpetuates a stereotype that all homeless people have problems with addiction. When Tenfold operated a temporary shelter last winter, many guests were simply disabled or elderly, she said, and many had jobs.

Every local expert on housing and social work who spoke to LNP | LancasterOnline for this story said creating more affordable housing units is the best way to respond to homelessness. William Fife, associate director of Lancaster General Hospital’s Family & Community Medicine department, said his patients typically need a blend of resources, like housing and health care, to improve.

“This increase in housing instability is not caused by Housing First or a comprehensive approach to treating people with housing insecurity, it is caused by less affordable housing in communities,” Fife said in an email.

Saner said Trump’s executive order does not give outreach workers like herself the proper tools they need to help a person out of homelessness, namely better access to housing and health care.

“I can’t see that this would have any type of positive effect,” Saner said. “It lacks the meat and potatoes for us to wrap our heads around it.”

County Commissioner Alice Yoder, who has a health care background from serving as executive director of community health at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, said local behavioral health institutions are more likely to become overwhelmed under Trump’s directive. Facilities are running out of room as it is, she said, and federal cuts to Medicaid will make it more difficult to serve people.

“It’s mind-boggling to me,” Yoder said.

Staying the course

Jennifer Frank, a professor of social work at Millersville University, said a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer that upheld bans on public camping and sleeping seemed to be the “worst possible scenario” for people experiencing homelessness.

Now, Frank said, Trump’s executive order may usurp that.

In Lancaster County in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Frank said, officials acted with more “gumption” to sweep homeless encampments. Last summer, many outreach workers reported encampments growing throughout the county, particularly on the Route 30 corridor in East Lampeter Township, only for them to be quickly dismantled at the direction of property owners.

Frank said she worries things will get worse for the homeless.

Yoder said she also worries about the implications of Trump’s executive order. She compared the potential withholding of federal dollars from local governments that don’t embrace a harder line approach to homelessness to being held “hostage.”

Still, Yoder said she doesn’t anticipate the county’s approach to homelessness changing. She said the county Homelessness Coalition is likely to remain dedicated to the housing-first approach, and officials will continue to develop a four-year strategic plan to address homelessness. The plan is expected to be finished by the end of the year.

The Homelessness Coalition did not respond to a request for comment.

Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace said Trump’s executive order would not impact the city’s approach to homelessness.

“We have ordinances in place regarding illicit drug use and camping and we are enforcing these local laws,” Sorace said in an email statement. “We make referrals to providers for both mental health and substance abuse disorder and the providers make the decision about treatment.”

When asked whether Sorace has concerns about any funding at risk as a result of the executive order, a spokesperson said city officials have concerns about recent executive orders but are waiting to see how ongoing legal challenges play out.

Some homeless advocates say things need to change in Lancaster County for homelessness to be addressed in a meaningful way. Dave Costarella, the founder and leader of Hand Up Partners, and Amos Stoltzfus, the director of Tenfold’s neighborhood group SoWe and a Democratic City Council candidate, have pushed for legal, managed encampments. Stoltzfus said the need is dire, as shelter beds are limited across the county.

Outreach worker Saner said the executive order should push officials to better prepare to handle homelessness at the local level.

“This is a crisis,” she said. “It’s been a crisis, and we need to start working like it’s a crisis and solve it instead of waiting for something to react to.”