STATEMENT: Trump’s Attack on D.C.: Banishment is Not a Solution to Homelessness.
- Alliance for Housing Justice
- 7 days ago
- 1 min read
On Sunday, President Trump posted a horrifying screed announcing plans to force all of D.C.’s unhoused residents to “move out, IMMEDIATELY” and send them “FAR from the Capital.”
With HUD reporting a national record of 771,480 people unhoused on a single night last year—including 5,616 unhoused people in D.C., over 80% of whom were Black—vilifying and rounding up our cities’ most vulnerable is racist, cruel, irrational, and dangerous.
If the goal is to solve homelessness, forced mass displacement and criminalization do the opposite: they deepen trauma, erect barriers to housing and work, worsen racial disparities, and put women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, and other underserved groups at greater risk.
Serious leaders must reject Trump's approach and invest in implementing real solutions at scale: Build and preserve social and public housing; expand permanent supportive housing and services; and enact strong tenant protections so residents aren’t pushed into homelessness in the first place.
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Alliance for Housing Justice is a coalition of organizations including Popular Democracy, Housing Justice for All NY, Housing Now! CA, Liberation in a Generation, PolicyLink, People's Action, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Housing Law Project, PowerSwitch Action, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, Public Advocates & Right to the City Alliance