Alliance for Rights and Recovery Denounces Trump Executive Order’s
Promotion of the Failed Policies of Institutionalization and Coercion;
Calls for a Major Investment to Expand Best Practice Voluntary
Services and Attract and Retain the Community Workforce
The Alliance for Rights and Recovery joins a broad array of national and state organizations representing Americans with major mental health and substance related challenges, their families, community providers, faith leaders and disability advocacy groups in strongly condemning President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
Based upon the unfounded characterization of unhoused people with these conditions as violent and a major threat to public safety, the order explicitly calls for a return to the failed and very costly policies of the past, most notably warehousing people in long-term hospitalization and pressing states to prioritize the use of coercive involuntary inpatient and outpatient treatment.
“The data is clear that housing not hospitalization, compassion not coercion and access to healthcare and nutritional assistance rather than leaving illnesses and hunger unaddressed are the most effective and ethical responses to the homeless epidemic,” said Harvey Rosenthal, CEO of the Alliance. “Yet, the Trump Administration has led the way in securing major cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits and the rising waitlists for federally supported housing benefits,” he said.
The order also aims to end the use of proven strategies to voluntarily engage and offer immediate access to housing with supports to people in crisis (‘Housing First’).
These actions are not only harmful and ineffective, they are also inhumane.
Forced institutionalization and court-ordered treatment do not reduce homelessness, nor do they address the root causes of poverty or unaddressed mental illness and substance use. They isolate people, violate autonomy, and have been thoroughly discredited as solutions by decades of research and real-world experience.
“Implementation of the Executive Order will drive people away rather than draw them to the services they need the most,” said Vice President for Public Policy Luke Sikinyi. “It will not create trusted and sustained relationships that are essential to making services work,” he said.
While the terms of the order are presented as money savers, it will instead result in the very wasteful investment of countless billions of taxpayer dollars in the anticipated expansion of state, private and public community hospitals, none of which are designed to provide the housing, clothing and food people really want and need.
It will expand the use of an involuntary outpatient commitment program (often referred to as Assisted Outpatient Treatment) that a recent study by the Government Accounting Office found no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness, despite a $146 million investment of taxpayer dollars.
The wholesale expansion of coercion also threatens to violate Americans’ basic rights of due process and, as the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law stated, will “upend decades of established Supreme Court precedent and eliminate basic protections that prevent the arbitrary confinement of people based on a disability.”
At the Alliance, we know what works:
- Major investments in state and local systems that increase access to services by breaking long waiting lists and very high staff vacancy rates,
- A major federal commitment to help states to fund engaging, effective, and culturally appropriate street based engagement, crisis stabilization, hospital and jail/prison diversion, peer to peer INSET and first responder teams
- Permanent supportive housing using the Housing First model and
- Harm reduction, crisis stabilization, respite and first responder programs
This Executive Order ignores what has been proven to work and instead criminalizes poverty, illness, and vulnerability—turning back the clock on decades of progress and compassion. It doesn’t just fail our most marginalized communities; it punishes them.
“The administration must reverse course immediately and focus federal support on effective, person-centered programs that treat people with dignity and address real needs. The safest, healthiest communities are not built through surveillance and force — they’re built on real quality support services, housing, and human rights,” said Rosenthal.
Contact:
CEO Harvey Rosenthal, harveyr@rightsandrecovery.org, 518-527-0564
Vice President for Public Policy Luke Sikinyi, lukes@rightsandrecovery.org, 518-703-0264.
About the Alliance for Rights and Recovery:
The Alliance for Rights and Recovery (formerly NYAPRS) is a state and national change agent dedicated to improving services, public policies and social conditions for people with mental health, substance use and trauma-related challenges, by promoting health, wellness, rights and recovery, with full community inclusion. Visit our website for more information: Home – The Alliance for Rights and Recovery