Trump: Homelessness ‘Phenomenon That Started Two Years Ago,’ Says Administration ‘May Intercede’

What’s the story?

• President Donald Trump told Fox News that his administration “may intercede” to combat people “living in hell” due to homelessness in major U.S. cities.

"We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It's inappropriate. Now, we have to take the people and we have to do something. We're really not very equipped as a government to be doing that kind of work."

• He added: "You can't have what's happening—where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat. I mean, they're getting actually very sick, where people are getting sick, where the people living there living in hell, too."

What are the numbers?

• Trump’s comments came in response to recent figures showing the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County ballooned 12% in the past year.
• San Francisco saw a 17% jump in the number of homeless residents over the last two years.
• Nationally, the number of homeless people in the U.S. remained relatively level between 2016 and 2018, rising from 550,000 to 553,000 last year.

Who’s to blame?

• Trump blasted the “liberal establishment” and sanctuary cities run by “very liberal people” for the homeless crisis.
• “It's a phenomenon that started two years ago. It's disgraceful,” Trump said, alluding to when he took office.

“You see what’s happening in California, where they just announced a plan to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants, when it could very well be used — all of that money — to provide housing and hospitalization and medical for the rising number of homeless people. Then the Democratic-run cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco — do you see what’s happening to those cities?”

• Mental illness, he said, may also be a factor.

“Some of them have mental problems where they don’t even know they’re living that way,” he said. “In fact, perhaps they like living that way. They can’t do that. We cannot ruin our cities. And you have people that work in those cities. They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago.”

What’s the solution?

• Trump lamented the problem of foreign nationals visiting Washington, D.C., and seeing a surfeit of homeless.
• "When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the president of the United States and they're riding down a highway, they can't be looking at that," he said. "They can't be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco... So we're looking at it very seriously. We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up."
• Trump said he personally “ended” the homeless problems in D.C., but did not elaborate on how.

"You know, I had a situation when I first became president. We had certain areas of Washington, D.C., where that was starting to happen, and I ended it very quickly. I said, 'You can't do that.' "

• Homeless numbers in the D.C. are, indeed, at their lowest level since 2001, but they had been dropping before Trump arrived in the capital.
• In January 2018, the administration announced $2 billion in grants for local agencies trying to help the homeless.

What do you think?

Should the federal government ‘intercede’? How? What should be done about the homeless crisis? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman