By Angela Hart for KFF Health News.

Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the KFF Health News-Public News Service Collaboration

File photo, left, by Miriam Raftery:  A homeless man living in a makeshift tent in Lemon Grove in 2024

April 26, 2025 (Washington D.C.)-- President Donald Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation’s leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis.

“Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares,” Trump said in a presidential campaign video. “For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage.”

Now that he’s in office, the assault on “Housing First” has begun.