‘Chaos, fear and confusion': Trump-backed crackdown hits DC's homeless population

CNN

4 days ago

Fear and confusion are spreading among Washington, DC's homeless population at the start of President Donald Trump's crackdown on encampments.
Leaders from three prominent advocacy groups in the nation's capital — where about 800 people live on the streets on any given night — told CNN they're bracing for the worst, lobbying city officials to open up more shelter beds, and mulling potential lawsuits.
Facing new pressure from Trump, DC officials are also grappling with the same broad question that other big cities have faced as they seek to get homeless people off the street: How to provide enough shelter space and services to accommodate them.
'There's definitely a lot of chaos, fear and confusion,' said Amber Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, a nonprofit with hundreds of open cases. 'It doesn't help that the messaging from the federal government has been all over the place. And there's no communication or coordination with the DC government.'
Sweeps began Wednesday after a anxious few days where homeless residents and their allies waited to see who would be targeted, and which federal forces would be involved.
Another major sweep took place Thursday morning at an encampment near a highway close to the vaunted Lincoln Memorial and Kennedy Center, where Trump's motorcade often passes through. Last week, he posted photos of this encampment on social media.
Officials from DC agencies, social workers, advocacy groups and well-wishers helped homeless residents pack up their belongings and dismantle about a dozen tents. No federal law enforcement agents were on site, and a DC official told CNN the sweep was conducted solely by local authorities. One DC police officer patrolled traffic nearby.
As part of Trump's stated goal to 'rescue' DC from 'bloodshed, bedlam and squalor,' he announced aggressive new moves this week to federalize the local police force and deploy National Guard troops in the city. He also declared that homeless people 'have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,' and added, 'we will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.'
White House officials said they'll send homeless people to shelters — or to jails if they refuse. But advocates claimed this would be unlawful, counterproductive and costly by disrupting existing efforts to move homeless people into shelters or permanent housing.
And not everyone wants to move to a shelter. Heather Bernard, 55, a homeless woman who lives outside of a grocery store in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of northwest DC, told CNN she prefers to stay on the streets 'until I get my house.'
'I've been to shelters and all that,' Bernard said. 'People don't get along with me. Maybe they think I'm a threat. They put me out at one, two or three in the morning, on snow days or wet days. It's their facility, so you can't fight it. When they say leave, you have to leave.'
The latest federal survey, released in December, found that there were about 770,000 homeless people in the United States – the highest number on record, after a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic that still hasn't waned. Studies show that homeless Americans are disproportionately people of color, have mental illness or addiction, or are members of the LGBT community.
How to handle these people and their tents, particularly in areas that are busy or frequented by tourists, has plagued the mostly Democratic leaders in big US cities. A dispute over whether cities can ticket people for sleeping on the streets even reached the Supreme Court last year. Trump, with his unique authority over DC as president, has now taken matters into his own hands in the federal district.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that DC's police department, which is now under the direct control of the Trump administration after he federalized the force, will use 'pre-existing laws that are already on the books' to force homeless people to move into shelters or addiction treatment, or 'be susceptible to fines or jail time.'
This claim, and Trump's past pronouncements, left experts like Harding confused.
'People can be offered a space in a shelter, but they can't be forced to take a space, and then fined or arrested if they don't go into shelter,' Harding said. 'That's not a law in DC.'
Additionally, when Trump said last week that homeless people would be offered beds and forced into shelters, 'there were literally no beds available,' Harding said.
Advocacy groups and the city worked together to opened up some new beds the next day, Harding said. And a DC official told CNN on Thursday that local authorities can quickly add additional beds on an emergency basis, as the Trump-backed sweeps continue this week.
The vast majority of homeless people in DC are already in shelters: The latest tally found that only about 15% of DC's roughly 5,100 homeless people live on the streets. This is from a 'point-in-time' count, a census of homeless people on a given night.
Harding said her legal clinic has done 'extensive trainings' with DC's Metropolitan Police Department. But in addition to federalizing MPD, Trump also directed agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, the US Marshals Service and other federal officers to assist with local law enforcement duties in the nation's capital.
It's unclear which of these federal agencies, if any, are involved in clearing homeless encampments. The US Park Police, which is part of the Interior Department and has cleared dozens of homeless camps this year, didn't answer CNN's request for comment.
'We don't feel any confidence that federal law enforcement have any training in how to interact with people on the street, or know what resources are available,' Harding said.
DC Council member Charles Allen told CNN he's also worried about the federal influx.
'People have a right to be concerned,' said Allen, a Democrat whose ward includes the Capitol Hill area where many young families live. 'In my own neighborhood, just the other day, US Park Police were wandering through in the afternoon with assault rifles. How does that make us any safer?'
A leader of another top homeless advocacy group in DC, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said 'people are scared' — and that some nonprofits are worried about speaking out too forcefully about what's unfolding because they 'don't want to piss off the (DC) mayor, because everyone is competing for their slice of local government funding.'
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump's takeover of MPD 'unsettling,' but promised to cooperate, and showed deference to Trump's legal authority. So far, she has stuck a more diplomatic tone than many of her fellow Democrats in dealing with Trump, though she did eventually come around to labeling his federal deployments as an 'authoritarian push.'
She also noted that DC's violent crime rates fell in recent years from Covid-era peaks, and her administration touted a 9% drop in the city's homeless population this year.
Bowser has had time to prepare for this seemingly inevitable clash.
Trump said in March that he told Bowser she 'must clean up all of the unsightly homeless encampments' in DC or 'we will be forced to do it for her!' And last month, he signed an executive order making it easier for jurisdictions to remove homeless people from the streets, reversing decades of federal policy that focused on giving them stable housing.
Trump's actions have created a crisis in the DC advocacy space that supports the city's homeless population. His antagonistic posture toward a city where Kamala Harris won 90% of the vote last year should not come as a surprise, conservativestrategist Gregg Keller told CNN.
'it's a very poorly kept secret,' Keller said. 'It's understood within the political right and the Trump administration that these advocacy groups are often little more than political arms of the Democrat Party, which helps explain why they're being targeted for scrutiny.'
The DC mayor's office declined to comment when contacted by CNN.
Bernard, the homeless woman who lives outside a Mount Pleasant grocery store, swept up her area with a broom Wednesday morning before what was supposed to be a scheduled cleanup by city agencies, that was slated several weeks before Trump's announcements.
Employees from local nonprofits that have worked with her for years — trying to get her into permanent housing — were also waiting to see what would happen, and if any of the newly empowered federal agents would tear down her site. She had three chairs, a doormat, a small table, nearly 20 bags filled with food and clothes, a cooler, and two shopping carts.
A handful of well-wishers from the tight-knit neighborhood stopped by, too. One young woman flagged down 'Miss Heather,' hugged her, and handed her a bag with some food.
'I felt alone and lost,' before settling in Mount Pleasant two decades ago, Bernard said. 'They care about me in this community. I'm very mannerly, and I try to behave. But I have problems, too. I'm homeless, I'm bipolar, and a few other things. But I don't let it deter me.'
Due to a logistical hiccup, the scheduled clean-up didn't happen. But Bernard's future is uncertain. And advocates like Edward Wycoff, from District Bridges, who works on Bernard's case, say the Trump-backed sweeps disrupt real efforts to end homelessness.
'The amount of money expended on pushing people out pales in comparison to what we're going to end up spending,' Wycoff said. 'They'll no longer be connected to their services, and then the cost becomes exponential. If this is a test case — on this block or in this city, as it seems to be — we will have a very dire situation in the coming months.'
Other homeless DC residents that spoke to CNN expresses unease about shelters even if a bed is available — which the White House says could lead to their arrest.
'They keep sending me to shelters, and I'm not shelter material,' said Isis Burnette, who is has been homeless for three years and lives on the street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Holding back tears, she said, 'I don't belong in a shelter. I want a house. I want a home.'
CNN's Camila DeChalus, Kit Maher, Christine Lien and Steven Williams contributed to this report.