Shelters and mental health advocacy groups in Maine are raising alarms about an executive order signed Thursday by President Donald Trump that makes it easier for cities to forcibly remove and involuntarily hospitalize homeless people.
The order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” calls for sweeping changes to how the federal government manages homelessness by prioritizing federal grant funds for municipalities that actively crack down on drug use and encampments. It also seeks to restore and expand involuntary civil commitment, a practice in which courts can forcibly hospitalize citizens without their consent.
The White House further seeks to end federal funding of harm reduction programs, which work to address homelessness and addiction through treatment and prevention rather than criminalization.
“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,” the order reads. “Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.”
Trump’s order claims that harm reduction programs “encourage illegal drug use and its attendant harm” despite studies from the federal Centers for Disease Control showing the opposite: Harm reduction services, like providing clean needles and the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, are among the most effective ways to curb illicit drug use.
The order could have major ramifications in Maine, where a statewide housing crisis fueled by rising cost of living and a stubborn opioid epidemic has pushed thousands of people onto the streets, many in large encampments.
Some cities have begun enforcing camping bans while local shelters exceed capacity, creating a cycle of arrest where people are repeatedly incarcerated solely for being homeless. Maine homeless advocates expressed concern Friday that the executive order codifies that cycle into federal policy.
“By getting rid of harm reduction, you’re basically signing a death warrant for patients,” said Katie Spencer White, president of the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter in Waterville. “You’re making it impossible for service providers to do the work of meeting the needs of people who have addiction.”
The overall number of people experiencing homelessness in Maine fell slightly from last year as local governments and advocacy groups have expanded capacity at shelters and moved towards a housing-first approach. Advocates say it remains unclear how the executive order will impact that work.
Preble Street, which provides services to homeless individuals in Portland and Bangor, also condemned the order.
“We are angry today,” the organization wrote in a statement. “Angry and pissed off at this awful executive order from the White House that will criminalize homelessness and incentivize communities, states, and agencies to stop doing the things that we are doing and have already proven to work to end homelessness.”
What’s causing more concern for some is the revival of civil commitment, something Kim Moody worked for years to eradicate in Maine. Now the executive director of Disability Rights Maine, Moody said Trump’s executive order poses a threat to many of the organization’s clients.
“It’s impossible to believe that this administration wants to go out onto the streets, round people up and lock them away. That’s what this is,” she said. “We’re going back to a time when we just lock people away because we don’t want to look at them.”
Moody referred to a time when Maine and many other states operated large warehouse-style institutions that housed people with mental illness.
Trump’s executive order, she said, fails to account for the severe lack of mental health services and healthcare infrastructure in Maine and across the country. The line between incarceration and hospitalization is thin, she said, and could effectively be erased with the revival of civil commitment without any sort of infrastructure to accommodate it.
Trump’s order also calls for the collection of health data from homeless people targeted for civil commitment, which the American Civil Liberties Union said raises “serious concerns about surveillance, privacy, and how such data could be used to justify further criminalization.”
Coupled with the simultaneous defunding of public health and advocacy agencies that deal with homelessness, Moody described the executive order and other Trump administration actions as “a complete nightmare.”
“It’s taking us back to the 1950s when we began the psychiatric survivor movement,” she said. “It’s really, truly beyond anything any of us ever dreamed would happen.”
