Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets

Order 14321 addresses widescale mental illness and substance abuse among America’s homeless by directing federal agencies to find ways to facilitate the entry of more such individuals into treatment facilities. In part it does so by eliminating prior HHS grant guidelines that channeled federal funds to cities that used the money to implement “safe consumption,” “housing first,” and other policies the Trump Administration believes generate more homelessness and addiction.

The order also seeks to require that recipients of Housing and Urban Development grants make beneficiaries suffering from mental illness and addiction seek treatment as a condition of participation in shelters and other programs, prioritize women and children in shelters, and forbid beneficiaries who are sex offenders from being housed with unrelated children. In a similar vein, it directs HUD and other agencies to determine whether any of their discretionary grants allow them to prioritize states and municipalities that prohibit open drug use, sleeping on streets, and squatting.

All of the foregoing is arguably in-bounds insofar as state and municipal governments can choose whether or not to abide by these statutorily permissible conditions for receiving federal funds. Caution is in order, however, where the order seeks to reverse “State judicial precedents” that inhibit its objectives. The order does specify that such action should only take place “in appropriate cases,” but there is the potential for subsequent overreach by overzealous federal officials. Similarly, the order’s direction to federal agencies to use guidance to advance its objectives could lead to abuses, given the tendency over the past decade for federal guidance to be illegally deployed as a form of unauthorized rulemaking.

Federal Register :: Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets

July 24, 2025