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.”