Alliance Alert: The Unapologetically Black Unicorns podcast recently released a powerful episode revisiting the origins and success of Housing First with its creator, Dr. Sam Tsemberis.
Housing First is a simple yet transformative approach to homelessness:
- Immediate access to permanent housing without preconditions such as sobriety or treatment compliance.
- A foundation from which individuals can address health, employment, and recovery goals.
- Demonstrated reductions in costly emergency services, hospitalizations, and institutionalization.
- A humane, dignity-centered model that prevents further trauma and fosters community healing.
Developed by Dr. Tsemberis in the 1990s, the model has been implemented nationally and internationally, with overwhelming evidence showing it saves lives and taxpayer dollars.
Unfortunately, the current federal administration has moved to defund Housing First at the federal level, shifting resources toward punitive and coercive measures such as large-scale homelessness sweeps and the forced institutionalization of people with mental health challenges. These approaches do nothing to solve homelessness — they merely hide people from public view while failing to address the underlying causes.
Real, lasting change requires an evidence-based strategy that supports people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing and robust community-based services, including mental health support, substance use treatment, employment supports, and peer-led recovery programs. Housing First recognizes that stable housing is the foundation for recovery, stability, and health — not a reward for meeting arbitrary conditions. Abandoning this proven model in favor of coercion not only wastes taxpayer dollars, it perpetuates cycles of instability, trauma, and displacement.
The Alliance remains committed to ensuring that New York continues to invest in Housing First initiatives and integrated community-based supports, even as federal policy shifts away from what works. To support this effort, we will be hosting workshops and keynotes on responding to the federal administration’s policy and funding changes, featuring national leaders, Congressman Paul Tonko, and former government officials. We will also have workshops focused on expanding and sustaining community-based services and supportive housing, ensuring that advocates and providers have the tools and strategies needed to protect what works and resist harmful policy shifts.
Unbreakable! Harnessing Our Power, Building Our Resilience, Inspiring Hope and Courage
Alliance for Rights and Recovery 43rd Annual Conference
Villa Roma Resort and Conference Center | September 29-October 1, 2025
Register Today Here!
The Alliance will continue to advocate for Housing First initiatives at the state and local levels, ensuring that everyone has access to safe, stable housing as the first step toward recovery and stability.
You can listen to the episode here: Housing First with Dr. Sam Tsemberis. See below for more information on the podcast and recent actions from the federal government in DC.
🎙️Pod Drop!! 🎙️ Housing First isn’t a “feel-good” policy—it’s smart, it’s humane, and it saves money.
Last year when I wanted to truly understand Housing First, I went to the source: Dr. Sam Tsemberis, the visionary who created the model.
In this timely throwback episode of Unapologetically Black Unicorns, Dr. Tsemberis shares what Housing First really is—and what it’s not.
✔ Immediate access to permanent housing without preconditions
✔ Reduces costly emergency services, hospitalizations, and institutional care
✔ Prevents further trauma while helping communities heal
If you’ve ever wondered about the Housing First Model or heard “myth-information” about it, this conversation will change the way you think about housing and homelessness policy.
You can find this episode on your fav pod platform or easily here: https://lnkd.in/gz9b863
Remember to subscribe, like and comment but most importantly share. You never know who needs to hear these messages and info so please do share 🙂
UnapologeticallyBlackUnicorns – Listen on YouTube, Spotify – Linktree
Trump Said D.C. Homeless People Would Have ‘Places to Stay.’ The White House Pointed to Shelters or Jail.
By Monica Alba and Laura Strickler | NBC News | August 12, 2025
WASHINGTON — Over the weekend, President Donald Trump urged homeless people living in Washington, D.C., to move out “IMMEDIATELY” and claimed “we will give you places to stay” that are “FAR” from the nation’s capital.
On Monday, he announced that he was federalizing Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the National Guard, saying the federal government will be “removing homeless encampments from all over our parks” in order to “rescue” Washington “from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
There were “many places” homeless people could go, Trump continued.
As of Tuesday, the administration had provided few details on how that would work, instead suggesting that displaced homeless people take advantage of existing services or face fines or jail time.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the MPD and U.S. Park Police will begin enforcing “pre-existing laws that are already on the books” to clear encampments as the president seeks to crack down on crime and “clean up” the nation’s capital.
“Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services, and, if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time,” she said.
Pressed on Trump’s social media post that homeless people would be moved far away from the city, Leavitt said that was still on the table. “We’re exploring how we could do that. But again, homeless shelters, [being] offered addiction and mental health services, or jail if they refuse are the options on the table right now,” she said.
Advocates for homeless people in Washington told NBC News that they have not yet heard of any widespread action against people living on the streets, but they are bracing themselves for Tuesday night.
Andy Wassenich, policy director for Miriam’s Kitchen, an organization focused on assisting homeless people in Washington, said he was “flabbergasted” by Leavitt’s suggestion.
“What are these ‘mental health services’ and who is paying for it? What does ‘leave’ mean? Are you going to give them subway fare to Silver Spring or are you going to put them on a bus? What does that mean?” he said.
“I just know that the resources that are available in the city are not able to accommodate the people who are currently sleeping outside,” Wassenich continued. “What happens if someone says ‘I will go to treatment’ and all of those slots are full? Then their choices are to go jail or go away? What if they are not mentally ill or drug addicted but just poor and they live here?”
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness is at an all-time high across the United States. In Washington, there were 5,616 homeless people in 2024, the latest year for which there is data, up from 4,922 in 2023. The majority of those people already stay in emergency shelters, according to the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, while nearly 800 people live unsheltered on the streets on any given night in Washington.
The city has shelter space “for anyone who wants to come inside,” said Wayne Turnage, the deputy mayor for health and human services.
That amounts to over 1,100 beds across the single adult system, Turnage added, saying that “the District can increase that capacity as needed.”
“The number of individuals experiencing homelessness in the District is down 9% this year,” Turnage said. “This figure incorporates all people who reside in emergency shelter, transitional housing, domestic violence shelters, runaway youth shelters, safe havens or are otherwise without stable housing.”
Leavitt said only two homeless encampments remain in federal parks in Washington that are under the jurisdiction of the Park Police, adding that 70 encampments had been removed since Trump signed an executive order in March directing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to direct the National Park Service to remove homeless encampments.
Those two encampments are scheduled to be removed this week, a White House official told NBC News.
There are existing procedures for local officials to coordinate with the federal government to clear encampments, according to a D.C. official, and that could include shelters and hospitals. One encampment, near P Street NW, was already scheduled to be cleared prior to Trump’s latest actions.
Mayor Muriel Bowser said Monday that she hadn’t been briefed on the plan for homeless people but planned to follow up with Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom she met with on Tuesday.
The district’s “goal is always to get people housed, stable and independent,” the D.C. official added, stressing that the mayor has said she wants homelessness to be “brief, rare and non-reoccurring.”
Wassenich compared clearing encampments to “a game of whack-a-mole.”
“You can’t be here, so they move somewhere else,” he said. “They are moving all over the place.”