July 28th, 2025

SOS Richmond’s Response to Trump’s Executive Order on Homelessness
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Write a Letter to your Congressperson

Our Position
We oppose this executive order, which prioritizes criminalization and reaction over systemic long-term solutions. Rather than easing suffering, it advances outdated policies that criminalize poverty and mental illness and erode the dignity and safety of people already pushed to the margins. It will exacerbate the problem, driving people deeper into instability. Sadly, we see the same from Governor Newsom on all counts.  

Richmond Does it Different.  We Work in Partnership with People and Government. 
At SOS Richmond, we believe that trusted community and warm support make big life changes possible. We don’t bulldoze tents to clear sidewalks; we walk alongside people to connect them to homes, services, and stability.
This order seeks to dictate how homelessness is handled — prioritizing enforcement over empathy and real solutions. Our approach centers the voices of people with lived experience who contribute their creativity to the issues when their talents have an opportunity to be expressed. 

What the Executive Order Proposes and Why It Does Not Solve Homelessness
1) It encourages mandatory removal of encampments and expanded authority for involuntary hospitalization of people with mental health conditions or substance use disorders.
2) It redirects federal funding away from proven programs like housing programs and harm-reduction toward jurisdictions that enforce anti-homeless laws.

• Abatements exacerbate the problem - Abatements cause significant harm, as our unhoused neighbors often lose everything—documents, bedding, clothes, and cherished keepsakes. Abatements also create further trauma by disbanding social networks, severing service relationships, and deepening feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
• Forced institutionalization isn’t care — it’s coercion. Lengthy involuntary commitments without community-based support undermine trust and violate civil rights.
• ​It mandates sweeping data collection on unhoused people, including their health and legal status, without privacy protections. 
• Criminalizing survival isn’t public safety. Removing people from streets amounts to involuntary internment. Not focusing on real housing solutions leads to a vicious cycle — sweeps, displacement, isolation, and return.

What We All Can Do 
We’re committed to defying policies that criminalize our neighbors’ poverty. Here’s how you can help:

• Advocate for humane human-rights-based approaches instead of sweeps and forced institutionalization.
• Support legal challenges being brought by organizations like the National Homelessness Law Center and ACLU.
• Stand with us in backing harm-reduction, public health, and healing-centered solutions.

Together, we can insist that compassion, not coercion, defines community safety. For a letter to send to your congressperson, click here. Find your Congressperson at https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative and mail or email your letter.”