When President Donald Trump said last week that homeless people needed to move out of the District of Columbia “immediately” — threatening jail time for anyone who didn’t get out of the city — he raised a pressing question for local officials: Where would the homeless go?
Trump’s efforts to break up homeless encampments and “rescue” the city from “squalor” have undoubtedly displaced a number of people who lack housing.
As of Thursday, a White House official told NOTUS that 48 homeless encampments had been removed from the District, though D.C. council member Matthew Frumin told NOTUS that number seemed like an overcount. (He suggested the administration could be counting each clean up of “someone’s property on federal land” as an encampment.)
Still, it’s clear Trump has put homeless people to an ultimatum. And when NOTUS asked a White House official where homeless individuals were expected to go, the official said they would be “given the option to leave, be taken to a homeless shelter or offered addiction and mental health services.”
“If they refuse,” the official said, “they will be susceptible to fines or jail time.”
But the White House official also said there hadn’t been any arrests yet and that “all homeless persons that have been encountered so far have complied with requests from law enforcement.”
That may seem like an unlikely outcome, but D.C. council member Christina Henderson told NOTUS that the city council had not, in fact, received any reports of anyone ending up in jail, though she was careful to note it’s possible some homeless people had been swept up in other crackdowns.
“There is an increase in the number of individuals who are currently at D.C. jail, who are in the Department of Corrections,” Henderson told NOTUS. “Could some of those individuals have been there for homelessness plus other things — you did a theft, but you’re also homeless? Yes.”
“Being homeless in D.C. is not a crime,” Henderson added. “So I don’t exactly know what you would charge a homeless person with if it wasn’t actually something that was criminal in nature.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that federal law enforcement would help the local police department enforce current homelessness laws in the District. Current laws could result in up to $500 in fines and 90 days in jail, she said.
But if homeless people aren’t going to jail and aren’t in encampments, where have they gone?
Frumin, one of the D.C. council members, said local officials have been worried that breaking up encampments would leave homeless individuals without shelter, which is why the District had opened additional beds in low-barrier shelters.
“The District has been doing clearings for a while, and we know how to do it, and we know how to do it humanely,” Frumin said. “There’s been an effort to try to make sure that whatever happens, happens according to our protocols. I don’t think we’ve seen a significant deviation from our protocols yet, but we also have not seen as much activity in this space as people had feared at one point.”
So far, council members said that as officers have closed encampments, homeless individuals have gone to local shelters and churches. Others have been able to get local hotel rooms through mutual aid societies.
The District of Columbia Housing Authority has also been expediting the processing of vouchers to allow some people to secure an apartment. And other organizations have assisted with locating family members of homeless individuals in other parts of the country.
Henderson, who chairs City Council’s Committee on Health, said that she has been in daily contact with the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health, and other local agencies, “trouble shooting” around this “difficult” situation.
“We have not received any reports of actual individuals at encampments or homeless individuals being arrested simply because they refuse to go to shelter,” Henderson said. “I know that’s what the president has said, that’s what he’s going to do … but that hasn’t actually been the practice we’ve seen on the ground thus far.”
Meanwhile, other Democrats in the city say they’ve been left in the dark about the homeless situation. When NOTUS asked D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s office where homeless people were going, a staff member said, “Unfortunately the admin isn’t informing us of their plans.”
Her office referred us to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office, who didn’t immediately respond to request for comment. The Metropolitan Police Department also didn’t provide comment.
Local governments within close proximity of D.C. are also closely monitoring how the administration’s “orders and federal actions” could affect homeless individuals. Ryan Hudson, communications director for Arlington County, Virginia, told NOTUS in a statement that officials are “monitoring what impacts, if any, they may have on County programs and operations.”
Diana Ortiz, president and CEO of the crisis hotline Doorways based in the county, also told NOTUS that her organization is keeping tabs on the situation.
“It’s too soon to know the full impact of recent events in D.C. for survivors and for our shelter and crisis services,” Ortiz said in a statement. “What we do know is that our hotline continues to receive a steady, and rising, number of calls from both inside and outside Arlington.”
Several Republican-led states have backed Trump’s mission, sending hundreds from their own National Guard to the District of Columbia. Soldiers from Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina and other states help make up the more than 1,800 National Guard troops stationed on District streets.
Henderson said the mayor’s office had been in touch with the D.C. National Guard regarding the situation. However, there has not been any communication with other states’ governors about their reasoning for sending their National Guard troops to D.C.
With so many veterans contributing to D.C.’s homeless population, Henderson said the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs could be doing more to ensure that veterans have birth certificates and other documentation needed to get housing and employment. She also said the federal government should increase funding for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which provides assistance to homeless youths.
“What I hate is this suggestion that D.C. officials were doing nothing about homelessness in the city until the president took an interest,” Henderson said. “The president hasn’t really taken an interest, because to actually fix homelessness, you don’t just arrest someone or move them to another jurisdiction. You provide them with housing. You make it possible for them to get a job.”