Blue America is best for families. For years, America’s elites have insisted that <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">blue states</a> — with their higher incomes, better-<a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">educated residents</a>, and expansive public services — are the best places to raise a family. Progressive policies such as paid family leave, childcare subsidies, and gender-neutral bathroom mandates, we were told, would draw parents in droves. Such policies prove “that one major party cares about children and families, and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">the other does not</a>,” according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">liberal journalist</a> Catherine Rampell. 
But the data tell a different tale. Across the country, families are packing up and leaving blue states for red states. They are also more likely to have children in red states to begin with. 
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">2026 Family Structure Index</a>, just released by the Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies, tracks family health across all 50 states. It focuses on three measures: marriage rates, fertility rates, and the share of children raised by married parents. These factors shape everything from child poverty to the health of the American Dream. 
What it reveals is a growing divide in where families are choosing to live — and where they are choosing to start a family.
Call it the Great American Family Sort.
Married couples with children are increasingly moving to red and purple states. From 2019 to 2024, 840,000 married families with children moved from blue states to red ones, while 470,000 moved in the opposite direction — a net gain of 370,000 such families for red states. 
Red states also enjoy higher fertility rates, all of which helps explain why red states have <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-lefts-family-problem-marriage-and-kids-cratering-among-liberal-young-adults">seen</a> a 7.3% increase in their child population since 2000, while blue states have seen a 7.1% decline. That shift is another indicator that Red America is proving more hospitable to family life.
In other words, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-blue-state-family-exodus-families-are-migrating-to-red-and-purple-states">blue states</a> long seen as the best places to raise children by liberal elites — states like California, Massachusetts, and New York — are steadily losing them.
Why? Start with what families actually need: jobs, homes, and safe neighborhoods. On each of these fronts, many red states are delivering. Over the past decade, states like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina have seen strong job growth, especially in sectors that support middle-class life. When young adults can find steady, well-paying work, they are more likely to marry and start families.
Housing is just as critical. Affordable single-family homes provide the space and stability families <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">want</a>. Yet in many blue states, especially on the coasts, restrictive zoning and high costs have pushed homeownership out of reach for young families. In much of red America, that dream remains attainable.
Taxes also shape family <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/americans-moving-to-states/">migration</a>. Lower tax burdens in many red states leave families with more room in their budgets, whether for childcare, a good private school, or saving for the future.
<div id="attachment_1073407" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1073407" class="size-large wp-image-1073407" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg" alt="San Francisco, CA, USA - August 17, 2020. Image of a moving truck parked in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />James Rice. Getty Images.</div>
Safety matters as well. Parents want to raise children in communities where they feel <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">secure</a>. States and cities that keep crime and public disorder low have a clear advantage in attracting and retaining families, even as many blue states are “plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction,” all of which are turnoffs to families, as even the liberal columnist Nick Kristof has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/progressives-california-portland.html">admitted</a>.
Still, economics alone does not explain what is happening. Family culture also matters. In many red states, there remains a stronger expectation around marriage and family formation, often stemming from deeply held religious beliefs. Social norms shaped by churches, civic life, and local leadership still influence how people live. Faith remains a powerful driver of American family life.
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">Family Structure Index</a> underscores this point. Frequent religious attendance accounts for 57% of the variance in fertility rates across states. States with high religious attendance, such as Utah and Mississippi, have far higher birth rates than states like Vermont or Massachusetts, where churchgoing is rare.
None of this suggests that red states have solved every problem. Marriage and fertility are down nationwide, and no region is immune. But the trend is clear: families seem more likely to thrive in some states rather than others. That should tell policymakers something important. If states want to attract and keep families, the formula is straightforward: make housing attainable, foster job growth, keep communities safe, and support a culture that encourages marriage and child-rearing. 
The deeper lesson is harder to accept. For too long, liberal elites have assumed that higher incomes and more government spending automatically lead to better outcomes for families. The evidence suggests otherwise. Public safety, good jobs, affordable homes, and culture matter just as much, if not more.
The Great American Family Sort is more than a demographic shift. It is a signal. Families are making their priorities clear through where they choose to live and have children. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention.
* * *
Aaron Baer is president of the Center for Christian Virtue. 
Brad Wilcox is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Asheville and Johnson City exit sign on highway in Tennessee on interstate 81 road

Turns Out Families Are Voting With Their Feet And Headed In One Direction

Blue States

Conservatives

Crime

Democrats

family

Florida

Homelessness

Jobs

Opinion

Red States

Social Issues

Tennessee

Texas

In New York City, there&#8217;s been a gigantic freeze, a freeze that has not only beset New York City but also the rest of the East Coast.
In Washington Square Park, a group of people started <a href="https://abc7ny.com/post/nypd-officers-hit-snowballs-injured-responding-washington-square-park-manhattan/18641766/">hurling snowballs</a> at several NYPD officers responding to a call. Not playfully either. They were actually trying to hurt them. They hurled objects at the police officers.
Every one of these individuals should be identified, arrested, and sent to jail — every single one of them. Hurling objects at police officers, assaulting police officers, mobs of people, some of them masked, trying to assault police officers — this is 1970s-style disorder in New York City.
And yes, it has been prompted and promoted by people like Zohran Mamdani. The attitude that governance has toward people who are hoodlums in the streets has a marked impact on whether or not people act like hoodlums in the street.
Forget about the broken windows theory. How about this: Attack a cop, you go to jail.
Pretty simple.
But the rising level of disorder and chaos we now see in the country is a direct result of governance decisions being made in blue cities, particularly by the people who actually run those blue cities. Does anyone think it has no impact on how people think of the cops that Zohran Mamdani has spent his entire career — prior to being elected mayor of New York — ripping on the cops and suggesting that they are a nefarious force for viciousness?
Of course, it has an impact.
Every single one of those people pelting the NYPD with snowballs should go to jail. Those are full-grown adults, by the way. Those are not kids. You&#8217;re not talking about misbegotten 15-year-old juvenile delinquents who get frisky with the cops.
If you look at the video, you can see people standing there, and when the cops arrive, they start hurling objects at them.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2373-candace-owens-is-evil-trash?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Jessica Tisch, who is the commissioner of the NYPD, put out this statement: “The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops. I want to be very clear: the behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal. Our detectives are investigating this matter.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops.
I want to be very clear: The behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal.
Our detectives are investigating this matter.
— Jessica S. Tisch (@NYPDPC) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYPDPC/status/2026128921905803638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @NYPDPC/X.com
The Patrolmen&#8217;s Benevolent Association stated, &#8220;This is the environment that NYC police officers are up against. Our police officers are being treated for their injuries, but the case CANNOT end there. The individuals involved must be identified, arrested and charged with assault on a police officer. And all of our city leaders must speak up to condemn this despicable attack.&#8221;
The fact is, this attitude toward the police has become commonplace in the United States. 
Beginning in 2014, you had the Ferguson riots, justified by the president of the United States. Americans didn&#8217;t like that; Donald Trump was elected. You saw a reversion to a law-and-order attitude at the top, but in 2020, the anti-police attitude broke out anew on a much bigger scale.
Now you have blue cities that are being taken over by people who are effectively defund-the-police advocates.
Those advocates may turn around and claim they want to work with the cops, but it&#8217;s too late: message received.
This disorder comes from the top. It does not come from the bottom. A disordered government leads to a disordered citizenry. 
There&#8217;s a reason that we use the phrase “law and order.” It&#8217;s not just law; order also has to be implemented. 
Speaking of Zohran Mamdani — who has totally changed the policy in New York City with regard to getting people off the streets in the middle of blizzards, and then a bunch of people died — he&#8217;s saying that people actually died from overdoses, not because they were freezing. 
You&#8217;re doing a great job, Mayor Uselessness. 
“We have more than 500 homeless outreach workers who have been traversing the five boroughs looking to connect homeless New Yorkers with services and support,” he declared. “And what we&#8217;ve also learned is the tools that were effective over the course of the prolonged cold period —again, a historic period of subfreezing conditions — those are ones we&#8217;ve employed from the very first day of our response to this one. I&#8217;ll give you one example. A number of those New Yorkers who lost their lives. The preliminary indications came that it was from an overdose-related death.” 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/friendly-fire?utm_campaign=dwplus&amp;utm_content=20260224_sotu_aa_desktop&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=banner" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch the State of the Union with The Daily Wire! Live coverage from the nation&#8217;s capital begins at 7:45 ET.</a>
It might have helped if he had forced those people to go inside. Perhaps if he didn&#8217;t let people sleep outdoors at all —regardless of the weather —people would die less often of drug overdoses on the street. 
But Mayor Smarmy over there grins at the camera. 
Always. 
And then through that gritted, smarmy smile, he utters the most inane platitudes. 
New Yorkers: You broke it.
You bought it.

Northeast Storm Knocks Out Power, Cancels Flights

Snowballs, NYPD, And Mamdani’s Smarmy Disorder

Ben Shapiro

Democratic Socialism

New York City

NYPD

Snow

Winter storm

Zohran Mamdani

In an early show of his leftist bona fides, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered police and sanitation workers to stop dismantling the city&#8217;s homeless encampments. Now that 18 people have died on the streets amid record cold temperatures, Mamdani is reversing course.
The mayor is expected to reinstate homeless encampment sweeps — which were standard under his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams — as early as Wednesday, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/01/29/us-news/nyc-cops-sanitation-workers-told-to-stop-taking-down-homeless-encampments-as-crisis-spirals/">according</a> to the New York Post. It&#8217;s a major reversal for Mamdani, who <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/01/29/us-news/nyc-cops-sanitation-workers-told-to-stop-taking-down-homeless-encampments-as-crisis-spirals/">claimed</a> that the city&#8217;s primary responsibility was &#8220;connecting [homeless] New Yorkers to housing.&#8221;
New York&#8217;s Department of Homeless Services will lead encampment sweeps by issuing notices to homeless individuals to clear their encampments within one week. During that period, homeless outreach workers will make repeated visits to connect individuals with shelters and supportive services.
Curtis Sliwa, the leader of New York’s Guardian Angels, a volunteer organization that conducts homeless outreach, told The Daily Wire that homeless individuals are reluctant to enter shelters for a number of reasons. 
“First off, they’re not in control of their mental faculties,&#8221; Sliwa said. &#8220;Number two, they fear going into a shelter where they&#8217;re going to be preyed upon, where what few, few items that they may have will be stolen from them, where they can be sexually abused and physically harassed, and just again turned into a human piñata.” 
Sliwa also said many individuals who are struggling with addiction resist shelter rules, including a 10 p.m. curfew. Some, he said, believe they are better off in a jail cell than in a shelter. 
Before reversing his stance on encampment sweeps, Mamdani converted city buses into temporary warming centers during the cold streak. However, the initiative drew criticism after reports surfaced that the warming buses were difficult to locate. Mamdani took responsibility for the communication failures. “I think at the end of the day, that is the responsibility that I have as a mayor,” Mamdani said. “It’s never a moment to pass the buck to anyone else.” 
Some of the buses, which had 40 seats, were reportedly not operating at full capacity. Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney who leads a volunteer group called the Street Homeless Advocacy Project, <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/mayor-mamdani-takes-the-rap-for-mishaps-around-warming-buses-for-homeless-people">blamed</a> inadequate signage. “As the cliché goes,” he said, “Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” In an attempt to address the problem, Mamdani’s team committed to additional signage in more than <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-sent-a-warming-bus-to-a-hub-for-homelessness-those-who-needed-it-had-no-idea">ten languages</a>. 
With the homeless on the streets and not in shelters or warming buses, New York City has received more than 3,300 complaints about encampments, according to 311 data.
Mamdani&#8217;s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the encampment sweeps are a winter-only effort or a lasting policy change.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Holds Press Conference At Deno’s Wonder Wheel On Coney Island

Mamdani Abandons Key Leftist Policy As Homeless New Yorkers Freeze To Death

Mamdani Reverses Encampment Policy Amid Rising Winter Death Toll

Eric Adams

Homeless

mamdani

Professor Gad Saad coined the term &#8220;suicidal empathy&#8221; to describe a kind of empathy so extreme it ends up harming you. 
A prime example would be the way the West has approached immigration from third-world countries. You feel bad for people. You open your borders. A plethora of people come in and harm your civilization.
But now, it seems like we are moving beyond suicidal empathy into what I would call “homicidal empathy.” That would be exemplified by your empathy for someone getting them killed.
There’s a good example in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who promised, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
That collectivist warmth is manifesting in people freezing to death on the streets of New York City. Despite all of Mamdani’s photo ops showing him shoveling the snow (for a man who cannot bench press 135 pounds once), I don&#8217;t think the people of New York can count on his shoveling skills.
What he usually shovels is horse crap.
Mamdani has embraced a hands-off policy with regard to homelessness. This was the policy in California. It remains the policy in places like Los Angeles. This policy is empathetic toward the homeless to the point where you&#8217;re killing the homeless.
The policy argues that they should be able to live out on the streets, that it is a form of cruelty and intolerance to involuntarily commit people who are usually drug-addicted or schizophrenic, people who can&#8217;t take care of themselves. Somehow, it is more empathetic to leave them out on the streets to get scabies or to die in the cold.
This seems to be the way the left-wing brain is working in Mamdani-land, California, and other liberal areas of the country. 18 people have died in the cold snap that has hit New York City.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2367-mamdani-leaves-homeless-to-freeze-to-death?elementPosition=5&amp;row=6&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Brian Stettin, who served as a senior advisor to former Mayor Eric Adams in his administration, told the New York Post, “When a person is in imminent danger, there&#8217;s no debate. Whatever ideological divides we have should not have any impact on these policies during a Code Blue.”
A mumbling homeless woman who braved some Antarctic temperatures was featured on the front cover of the Post on Monday.
The Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/02/08/us-news/mumbling-homeless-woman-left-to-spend-night-on-nyc-sidewalk/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The unidentified woman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, slippers and two blankets as she clipped her nails, put lotion on her hands and talked to herself while hunkered down on East 34th Street across from NYU Langone Hospital as temperatures neared 0 degrees early Sunday. She refused repeated offers for help from EMS workers and cops — who explained to The Post they had to leave the shivering vagrant in the extremely dangerous bone-chilling weather because she could answer basic questions — a factor that helps meet the threshold of Dem Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial homeless policies.</blockquote>
That’s Mamdani&#8217;s shtick: If you can answer basic questions such as “What day of the week is it?” “What is your name?”, then they will leave you out on the streets to freeze. 
Mamdani held a press conference over the weekend. “Stay warm. Stay inside if you can. And please, stay safe,” he said.
“You&#8217;ve implored the people on the streets who feel more comfortable on the streets to come inside. But what happens if they don&#8217;t at this point? &#8230;20 minutes out in the cold could lead to a fatality. So are you not using as a last resort at this point to bring them inside and volunteer, even if just a few hours doesn&#8217;t lead to a placement?” a reporter asked.
“Involuntary transport continues to be used in the same manner it was as the prior administration,” Mamdani replied. “And thus far, we have seen clinical determinations of a number of New Yorkers who have been deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others. And sometimes that designation comes from an assessment that a New Yorker is not adequately clothed, given the weather that they are living through in that moment. And that is going to continue to be part of the assessments that outreach workers are making over the course of tomorrow or the next day.”
Mamdani’s last resort policy says that you can only be forced indoors if you are deemed a danger to yourself or others. The problem, of course, is that if you are Zohran Mamdani and you have spent your entire career ripping down cops and treating people as though they&#8217;re committing a human rights violation by pushing people indoors, people might be a little hesitant to actually take responsibility for calling somebody a “danger to themselves or others.”
The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/02/10/us-news/mamdani-wont-budge-on-involuntary-removal-of-homeless-new-yorkers-from-streets-as-cold-deaths-reach-18/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Down in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott — whom Mamdani once praised for his crime reduction efforts — late last month called the cold a life-or-death issue and ordered the police department to take people off the streets even if they were refusing services. “That direction order came from me because we cannot allow folks to be out in this kind of weather,” Scott said.</blockquote>
The fact that this has become a matter of public controversy is totally insane.
Zoran Mamdani apparently has so much sympathy for people. I&#8217;m going to put it out there: If you are out on the streets sleeping on the sidewalk, that is not a housing problem in the middle of a cold snap. That is a crazy problem if other options are given to you. No sane and rational person, by definition, who is not a danger to themselves, is sleeping out on the street in zero-degree weather. That is not a thing that sane and rational people do unless they are Arctic explorers of some type.
This comes down to Mamdani’s bizarro world empathy that legitimately gets people killed. This sort of policy, when you apply it to crime, leads to more criminals on the streets. When you apply it to homelessness, it leads to more homeless people on the streets.
The empathy that you have for the purported victim of America&#8217;s “evil, racist, abusive” system leads to the very people you are supposedly trying to help sometimes dying.
On February 6, the New York Post reported that Mamdani was still refusing to clear homeless camps and forcibly remove people from the streets, despite a rising death toll and a fresh snap of deadly deep freeze. Instead, he implored people to come inside.
If people refuse to come inside in the middle of zero-degree weather while living on the streets, it will not be solved by you imploring them.
City Journal <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/zohran-mamdani-homeless-deaths-cold-weather">reported</a>:
<blockquote>During last year’s campaign, Mamdani promised to end a program initiated by his predecessor, Eric Adams, that deploys clinicians, backed by police officers, to assess people’s ability to care for themselves and, if necessary, to transport them involuntarily to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He repeatedly said that involuntary commitment was a “last resort,” preferring instead an approach that would have civilian workers “help that person navigate their housing options.” He has also disavowed dismantling homeless encampments. </blockquote>
That was a proactive move by Adams to determine whether somebody ought to be on the streets or not. And Mamdani wanted to kill that. I guess the presumption was that unless they were in the throes of some sort of crime, they should never have an engagement with law enforcement.
The message being sent to the homeless is, basically, you have a right to live on the streets. And the message being sent to public service workers, cops, and mental health professionals is that you&#8217;re going to be called on the carpet if you make the mistake of bringing somebody in.
It&#8217;s nuts, it&#8217;s bad, and it&#8217;s stupid.
It&#8217;s indicative of a deeper brain rot that has set in large parts of the Left: That empathy amounts to humoring people in their delusions, even if it’s dangerous to them.

New York Governor Hochul Holds Press Conference Highlighting Her Administration’s “Let Them Build” Agenda

Mamdani Leaves Homeless To Freeze To Death 

Death

New York

In a recent ruling that defies both logic and compassion, a federal judge has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-altering-homelessness-funding-2025-12-19/">blocked</a> the Trump administration’s effort to reform the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care program — the federal government’s primary funding mechanism for homelessness assistance.
The lawsuit — filed by a coalition of 20 mostly Democratic-led states, local governments, and nonprofit organizations and spearheaded by groups such as Democracy Forward — warns of “funding gaps,” winter instability, and the potential displacement of people currently housed. These alarms are sounded even though HUD includes a nearly 12% increase over last year’s funding allocation.
At the core of the complaint is a <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/NAEH-v-HUD-25-cv-636-ECF-5-Motion-for-PI-and-Relief-under-705.pdf*page=74__;Iw!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b0_31aptA$">revealing claim</a>: that reform would “upend longstanding projects that have been thoughtfully developed to comport with evidence-based, best-practices services delivery.”
But HUD’s own data make clear that the evidence on which they have long relied is catastrophically wrong.
Despite a 300% increase in federal spending, homelessness has reached the <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1tF5NG4A$">highest level ever recorded</a> in the nation’s history. Unsheltered homelessness — the most dangerous and lethal form — has surged. 
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/07/homelessness-is-lethal-deaths-have-risen-dramatically__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b16yXyxfA$">Mortality</a> among people struggling with homelessness has also peaked. If these outcomes qualify as “evidence-based best practices,” then the phrase has lost all meaning.
The real question is not whether reform is upending but upending to whom.
The organizations positioning themselves as defenders of the homeless are fully aware of the catastrophe that has unfolded on their watch. Yet they are using the courts to block reforms aimed at saving lives, restoring accountability, and reversing a crisis their preferred policies helped entrench.
For more than a decade, Housing First has dominated federal homelessness policy. It prioritizes lifelong subsidized housing — branded as “permanent housing” — while eliminating requirements for sobriety, treatment for mental illness or addiction, or participation in work. Its architects promised stability, lower costs, and an <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article24585973.html__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1Wqmbr6A$">end to homelessness in a decade</a>.
Instead, the model guarantees keys to a housing unit while making treatment optional and accountability negligible.
With nearly 80% of the homeless population struggling with mental illness and/or addiction, the result is predictable and deadly: people are placed alone in apartments, isolated from the community and clinical intervention these diseases require. Overdoses go unseen, and help arrives too late.
California — the only state to adopt federally-mandated Housing First with state funding in 2016 — provides a stark case study. Despite an unprecedented <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2023-102-1/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1UVCip7w$">$24 billion investment</a> from 2019 to 2023, homelessness surged 40%. Encampments have proliferated, public trust has eroded, and taxpayers have seen zero return on their investment.
Yet as desperately needed reform proposals emerge, self-described “homeless advocates” — including several based in California — reflexively resist.
<div id="attachment_1041759" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041759" class="size-large wp-image-1041759" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-864x576.jpg" alt="San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team vehicle with city department logo parked on urban street, San Francisco, California, February 5, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team vehicle with city department logo parked on urban street, San Francisco, California, February 5, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)</div>
Their concern is not instability for the homeless, but instability for themselves: the potential loss of 12-year guaranteed renewals, preferred status, and the comfort of championing a single, simple — demonstrably failed — approach.
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2025/11/Local-Jurisdictions-Leverage-Homelessness-Reforms.pdf__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1YAAbk9A$">HUD’s proposed reforms</a> would rebalance funding toward transitional housing, mandatory treatment for addiction and mental illness, work and recovery expectations, and measurable outcomes — changes designed to promote self-sufficiency, public safety, and life-saving interventions.
The plaintiffs warn of “chaos” if reform proceeds. But chaos is not hypothetical — it is the present reality. Record homelessness despite unprecedented public spending. Sidewalks surrendered to encampments. Tens of thousands dead from overdoses, exposure, and untreated psychosis, including 18 mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-winter-death-toll-climbs-to-18-as-many-homeless-left-to-freeze-outside?author=Brecca+Stoll&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=NYC+Winter+Death+Toll+Climbs+To+18+As+Many+Homeless+Left+To+Freeze+Outside">died on the streets of New York City</a> in just the past two weeks.
<div id="attachment_1041761" style="width: 869px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041761" class="size-large wp-image-1041761" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-859x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 26: A person sleeps on a sidewalk with their belongings January 26, 2026 in the Manhattan borough of New York City. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to end sweeps of homeless encampments and plans to create a new Department of Community Safety, which will coordinate homeless outreach and respond to mental health crises. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)" width="859" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-859x576.jpg 859w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-300x201.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-768x515.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 859px) 100vw, 859px" />Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</div>
This is not a system at risk of failure. It has already failed.
The threat these reforms pose is to institutional comfort. The Housing First industry knows it will lose guaranteed funding renewals, protected status, and a model optimized for compliance rather than outcomes, to which it has become accustomed over the last 12 years.
Where is the outrage for those left lining the streets year after year, promised housing that never materializes?
Where is the outrage for those who died waiting for a system to recognize their worth and deliver the help that could have saved their lives?
By collapsing expectations to the bare minimum, Housing First has reduced capable human beings to permanent dependents — managed rather than restored, housed rather than helped — rather than treating them as people worthy of recovery, accountability, and reintegration into society.
True advocacy requires accountable compassion. It demands intervention when people are too sick to choose safety for themselves, and the moral courage to admit when a policy has become lethal.
The court’s injunction jeopardizes urgently needed funding and reform, but it also exposes a grim truth: those fighting to preserve Housing First are defending a deadly status quo. Every day reform is delayed, more lives unravel, and more people die from fentanyl poisoning, methamphetamine addiction, and untreated mental illness.
Those struggling with homelessness deserve far more than containment. They deserve a real path off the streets. They deserve recovery. They deserve the opportunity to rediscover purpose.
Reform is not disruption. It is a rescue mission.
* * *
Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @ DiscoveryCWP.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Homelessness In New York City

More Spending, More Suffering: The Failure Of America’s Homelessness Policy

Housing and Urban Development

Trump Administration

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1904-zohran-mamdani-freezes-16-new-yorkers-to-death?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
Zohran Mamdani just made a really sad and totally predictable announcement.
When the recent winter cold front made it to New York, it was not nearly as bad as the ice storm Nashville residents experienced. There was very little ice in New York, mostly just snow. Nevertheless, 16 homeless New Yorkers died during that brief little cold snap.
Here is the new mayor of New York:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Mayor Mamdani confirms sixteen deaths during dangerously cold weather in NYC <a href="https://t.co/pQ0L9i5Yzz">https://t.co/pQ0L9i5Yzz</a> <a href="https://t.co/zHAPfvu95u">pic.twitter.com/zHAPfvu95u</a>
— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2018388455508656233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @nypost/X.com
Mayor Mamdani says,
<blockquote>A severe cold front continues to bear down on our city. Today is our 11th consecutive day of below freezing weather, and we could very well be in the middle of the longest period of consecutive sub-32-degree weather in our city&#8217;s entire history. Without temperatures rising above freezing, snow has hardened into blocks of ice. But the greatest danger posed by the sustained cold is to vulnerable New Yorkers who remain exposed to the elements. As of this morning, 16 of our fellow New Yorkers have passed away outside during this brutal stretch of cold. In 13 of these cases, preliminary findings indicate that hypothermia played a role, and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths. We await final results from the medical examiner&#8217;s office and will inform New Yorkers as we learn more. Each of these lives lost is a tragedy. My heart was with the family of those mourning their loved ones.</blockquote>
Mamdani blames the deaths mostly on nature, though he admits a few of them were drug deaths. 
Unlike other areas of the country where recent ice storms knocked out power for weeks, New York City is built for cold weather. Cold weather hits New York every single year. New Yorkers knows how to deal with cold weather, especially when they have competent management and government.
The people who died in New York did not die because their power went out. New York didn&#8217;t lose power. They died because they were left to die on the streets. Why were they left to die on the streets? Is this just some immutable characteristic of New York? What can we do? Throw our arms up in the air? A long-standing problem?
No, it&#8217;s not.
They were left to die on the streets specifically because Zohran Mamdani, who has been in office for just one month now, left them to die on the streets. In fact campaigned to leave them to die on the streets.
Don&#8217;t take my word for it. Here is CBS News.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Mamdani says he&#039;ll end homeless encampment sweeps in NYC" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CWjUfoi6YCg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Credit: @CBSNewYork/YouTube.com
The reporter states,
<blockquote>Local New York Mayor Alexander Mamdani says that he will end the Adams administration&#8217;s practice of removing homeless encampments from city sidewalks. But advocates argue it will be a step backwards for the city&#8217;s quality of life. Ali Bauman questioned the mayor-elect about this tonight. For the past three years, the NYPD has been systematically removing homeless encampments from New York City sidewalks, a practice mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani vows to end once he takes office — vows to end it.</blockquote>
This is Mamdani campaigning and saying we are intentionally going to leave the homeless — who are almost entirely drug addicts and mentally ill — on the streets. And this is supposedly going to be compassionate. That&#8217;s a change of policy from the previous administration, which just left office.
A little history of New York City during the 1970s and 80s may be helpful. Back then, there were a lot of bums, a lot of criminals, and a lot of homeless people on the streets. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani came in in the 1990s and got rid of all that. He said, No, no, no — if you&#8217;re homeless, you need to go to shelters or we&#8217;re going to arrest you, but we&#8217;re not going to leave you on the streets.
After he was mayor of New York, Giuliani reiterated the same idea about the Occupy Wall Street protests. When people set up encampments all over the city, he said, No, no, no, you can&#8217;t do this. Sleeping on the street is a dysfunctional act which harms society and the individual.
In other words, letting the homeless stay on the street is contrary to the common good.
It&#8217;s not just that letting the homeless stay on the street is good for the homeless but bad for the rest of the New Yorkers who don&#8217;t want to see them — that&#8217;s how Mamdani is presenting it. The real argument, however, is no, it&#8217;s actually bad for everyone. Because it&#8217;s bad for the law-abiding New Yorkers who don&#8217;t want criminals and drug addicts and crazy people running around the streets all the time.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1904-zohran-mamdani-freezes-16-new-yorkers-to-death?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h3>
It’s also bad for the homeless because they&#8217;re susceptible to crime — susceptible to being assaulted or raped or killed. And they&#8217;re also vulnerable to the elements. It&#8217;s very, very dangerous to leave them on the streets year round, especially in the winter. And now we see the results.  This is the “warmth of collectivism.”
This is the compassion that Mamdani has promised. Leaving 16 New Yorkers dead during a totally predictable, minor cold front. And he even gives away the game in his speech by trying to mitigate his culpability by saying, “In 13 of these cases, preliminary findings indicate that hypothermia played a role, and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths.”
They basically froze like Jack Nicholson at the end of “The Shining.”
He then seems to avoid taking responsibility by saying, “&#8230;and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths.”
Like that&#8217;s better. Like it’s good that they chose to die, as if they were consenting adults. First of all, you can&#8217;t consent when you&#8217;re crazy, or when you&#8217;re addicted to all kinds of vices, or when you&#8217;re underage, or when there are all sorts of things that compromise our consent.
So Mayor Mamdani&#8217;s whole policy is based on a misconception of freedom — what freedom really is. Like all liberals, he thinks freedom is just neutrality in choosing. Well, some people choose not to do heroin, but some people choose to do heroin, and who are we to say which is the better choice?
It&#8217;s a misconception of freedom. It&#8217;s a misconception of the common good. It&#8217;s a misconception of what&#8217;s good for everybody. The common good is not just the random collection of all the individual goods of people, some of which are contrary to each other. In this kind of utilitarian calculation that tries to lead to the greatest utility for the greatest number, the common good is what we all share — what is good for all of us, what is not diminished by any individual good.
It’s also a misunderstanding of compassion. It is not compassionate to just ignore people. It&#8217;s funny because the Left accuses the Right of this: you just ignore people. You retreat to your nice neighborhoods and your penthouses and your money, and you ignore your common man. You don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re your brother&#8217;s keeper.
Sometimes the Right is guilty of that, especially the more Libertarian Right. The Left is just as guilty of that. Oh, just leave people to their degradation. Leave people to their vices. Leave people to their destructive behaviors — be it sexual ideologies, be it just license more broadly, be it with regard to living on the street — just leave them there.
It&#8217;s fine. You know, who are you to intervene? Who am I?
Well, I&#8217;m a reasonable person, and I&#8217;m a member of society, and I&#8217;m a citizen. And the consequences of all three of those misconceptions from Zohran Mamdani are that 16 people die on the street, whether from drugs or from exposure. That&#8217;s the “warmth of collectivism.”
What would have been more compassionate for the homeless: Zohran Mamdani, who says all sorts of sweet things about the homeless and leaves them to die on the street, or Rudy Giuliani, who talks a little tougher, who seems a little bit meaner, but who protects those people?
Where&#8217;s the real compassion?
That&#8217;s it. We&#8217;re one month into Mamdani — one month in — and you&#8217;ve got homeless ice cubes lining the streets of New York, some of which also have heroin and fentanyl in their blood.
We&#8217;re in for a real treat with Mamdani.

NYC Mamdani Holds News Conference On Healthcare At New York City Health Clinic

The Deadly Consequences Of Zohran Mamdani’s Homelessness Policy

Liberals

Winter Storm Fern

A viral story about former Nickelodeon child star Tylor Chase, who is now homeless, has taken a turn as his former co-star says he trashed a hotel room he was gifted.
Chase, now 36, captured the attention of the internet when a fan posted a video of him looking unkempt and seemingly living on the streets in Riverside, California. Chase was best known for his role as Martin Qwerly in the Nickelodeon series “Ned&#8217;s Declassified School Survival Guide” in the early 2000s. 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Tylor Chase &amp; Cookie reunite. Long term treatment needed #nedsdeclassified #danielcurtislee #tylor" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WmPagJMhjxw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
His former co-star Daniel Curtis Lee <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DSoC8cQgZBl/?hl=en">posted a video</a> of him reconnecting with Chase, buying him a meal, and getting him a hotel room. But then Lee posted an update saying Chase destroyed that room and fled.
“[The motel staff was] upset. The door&#8217;s left open. Why is there a microwave in the tub? The refrigerator&#8217;s turned over,&#8221; Lee <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@danielcurtislee/video/7587848053609090359?lang=en">shared</a> in a TikTok update. &#8220;I feel so devastated. I am at a loss.&#8221;
Lee went on to lament how there’s no way to get help for people who are addicted or mentally unwell despite there being “systems” in place.
When the original video of Chase started gaining traction, a fan started a GoFundMe campaign that was quickly shut down by the former child star’s mother, who said giving him cash would just make the situation worse, The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/12/25/entertainment/neds-declassified-alum-tylor-chase-trashed-motel-room-paid-for-by-daniel-curtis-lee/">reported</a>.
Chase’s father was interviewed by the Daily Mail, which shed more light on the family’s effort to help him find treatment for mental health issues and drug addiction.
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“He’s a wonderful person when he’s Tylor,” Joseph Mendez Jr. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15410309/tylor-chase-father-Nickelodeon-homeless-addiction-schizophrenia.html">told</a> the Mail. “For over a decade, the family has sought treatment options for Tylor, including support for substance use as well as mental health care,” he said.
He said Chase has been struggling with addiction since he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in 2015.
“He … chose to discontinue medication and resumed substance use,” Mendez said. “His family has been trying for many years to get him the support he needs, but ultimately, he must be willing to accept help,” Mendez said.
Social media commenters noted how the situation highlights the complexities of drug use, mental illness, and homelessness, saying it proves that giving homes to the homeless would not solve the issue in most cases.
“Because you can’t just stick someone homeless in a hotel room and BOOM they’re cured. He needs professional help,” one person <a href="https://x.com/Romanazswb/status/2004346821649613197">wrote</a>, echoing what many others were saying.
The latest update from influencer Jacob ‘Jake’ Harris was that Chase checked into a detox facility on Christmas Day. 
“We finally got Tylor the help he needed,” he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DStWjRkEUre/">shared</a> in an Instagram update. “He’s currently receiving medical attention to get him healthy, to get him all better.”

Tylor Chase

Former Child Star Tries To Help Homeless Co-Star. It Does Not Go Well.

Homeless Former Child Star Trashes Hotel Room Gifted By Former Co-Star 

addiction

Celebrities

Entertainment

Mental Health

New York City&#8217;s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, promised on Thursday to end homeless encampment sweeps when he takes over next month.
Mamdani said he would discontinue a priority enacted by current Mayor Eric Adams, who attempted to clear out &#8220;makeshift, unsafe houses&#8221; that have popped up throughout the city, The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/mamdani-to-stop-all-sweeps-of-homeless-encampments-as-nyc-mayor/">reported</a>. The mayor-elect will stop the sweeps despite city officials receiving more than 45,000 complaints about the homeless encampments so far this year.
Mamdani argued that the Adams administration&#8217;s policy has failed because it did not connect &#8220;homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need.&#8221;
“We are going to take an approach that understands its mission is connecting those New Yorkers to housing,” Mamdani added. “Whether it’s supportive housing, whether it’s rental housing, whatever kind of housing it is, because what we have seen is the treatment of homelessness as if it is a natural part of living in this city, when in fact, it’s more often a reflection of a political choice being made.”
New York City currently <a href="https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253">urges</a> residents to &#8220;report homeless people who have established encampments on public property,&#8221; adding, &#8220;In New York City, obstructions and encampments are not allowed.&#8221;
Mamdani cruised to a landslide mayoral election victory over former New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa last month in part because of his focus on affordability and housing. Mamdani vowed to build more affordable housing in the city and said he would push to freeze rents in some apartment buildings.
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He did not specify how he would address complaints about homeless encampments or if he would remove the city&#8217;s online complaint portal. New York City&#8217;s homeless population has skyrocketed in recent years, largely due to the massive influx of illegal immigrants, <a href="https://www.osc.ny.gov/press/releases/2025/01/dinapoli-numbers-homeless-population-doubled-new-york">according</a> to the New York state government. In January 2022, an estimated 45,343 people were in the city&#8217;s homeless shelters. Just two years later, there were nearly 90,000.
Mamdani&#8217;s opposition to the sweeps is partly based on a 2023 audit released by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, which found that during Mayor Adams&#8217; homeless encampment raids, only a small percentage of homeless people removed from their makeshift housing accepted temporary shelter with the city, Fox News reported.
&#8220;The evidence is clear: by every measure, the homeless sweeps failed,&#8221; Lander argued.
The Adams administration has pushed back on the audit, saying that Lander&#8217;s findings took the data &#8220;out of context.&#8221;
“Cherry-picking numbers and sharing them out of context paint a disingenuous picture as these cleanups have actually connected more than 500 New Yorkers to safe, stable housing,” City Hall said on Thursday.
“New York City continues to have the lowest rate of unsheltered homelessness of any major city in the nation,” City Hall added.

Mamdani Sides With Homeless Encampments Over NYC Taxpayers

Politics

Former President Barack Obama’s approach to combat homelessness has been “a disaster on every level,” according to Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Michele Steeb.
Steeb is an expert on homelessness and author of “Answers Behind the Red Door: Battling the Homeless Epidemic.” She said in an interview with Morning Wire that homelessness in the United States, and especially in California, has dramatically worsened since the federal government adopted “housing first” as its singular approach to homelessness.
The Bush administration first introduced the Housing First model to federal policy in 2008. The Obama administration massively expanded the policy in 2013, turning into the federal government’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to homelessness.
“Thankfully, the Trump administration has stepped in and said at the federal level, we need to reprioritize mental health treatment. Drug and alcohol counseling needs to be offered in conjunction with housing,” said Steeb, “and we need to clear these encampments because these encampments have become so dangerous. Not just for the individuals living in them, pets are now overdosing, women are being trafficked, and there&#8217;s spillover effects to the general public that have been devastating.”
The model, in theory, prioritizes stability. The Department of Housing and Urban Development under Obama’s housing first approach conditioned grant money to recipients on providing non-conditioned housing to the homeless. Providers cannot make requirements such as that a tenant stay sober or hold down a job in order to receive housing.
“Up until about 12 years ago, the federal government funded shelters, they funded transitional housing. They funded mental health and drug and alcohol treatment along with that housing,” said Steeb.
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It was under the Obama administration “that they said, you know what, we’re only gonna fund one thing now, and that one thing is housing subsidies, housing vouchers. We are not going to fund mental health treatment or drug and alcohol treatment or employment training. And we&#8217;re going to offer this housing to the homeless, subsidized housing for life with no conditions, none whatsoever,” she continued.
In practice, homelessness has drastically increased under the housing first approach. Those who are homeless have suffered even more as many of the conditions that contributed to their situation grow worse without proper treatment.
Housing first was designed for a very small segment of the homeless population, “but without any evidence, the Obama administration rolled it out,” said Steeb. “He literally promised it would end homelessness in 10 years. And 10 years later, 12 years later, exactly, we are at the highest point ever in our nation&#8217;s history, an almost 35% increase.”
A 2022 <a href="https://ciceroinstitute.org/research/housing-first-is-a-failure/">report</a> by the Cicero Institute found that homelessness increased by nearly 25% in areas that exclusively rely on the housing first model. The results are most apparent in California, where the state followed the Obama administration’s example and its homeless population has exploded, especially in urban centers such as San Francisco.
“California is the only state in the nation that followed the feds and said, all of our money on top of all of your money, the federal government’s, is now going to go to housing first. California has experienced a 40% increase since [2017] when they adopted this,” said Steeb. “California now has almost 50% of the nation&#8217;s unsheltered population, almost 40% of the overall homeless population in its cities have been ravaged by this.”

Barack Obama

12 Years Later, The Numbers Make Clear Obama’s Approach To Homelessness ‘Massively Failed’

Donald Trump

Executive

Seattle’s incoming mayor, Katie Wilson, will inherit a homelessness crisis that will define her ability to lead.
Seattle’s homeless population needs more than another round of aspirational promises. They need and deserve an operational reset grounded in compassion, accountability, and the courage to confront realities the city has failed to address for years.
She must replace press releases and ceremonial groundbreakings for housing that may never materialize with programs that support the homeless in reclaiming their lives from the grip of untreated mental illness, addiction, and dangerous encampments that have taken root throughout the city.
The scale of Seattle’s crisis is staggering. HUD’s 2024 Point-in-Time count identified <a href="https://kcrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Point-in-Time-Count-2024_King-County_final.pdf">16,868 people struggling with homelessness in King County</a> — 7,058 sheltered and 9,810 unsheltered — yet even this understates the emergency. It omits the thousands of K-12 students and their families couch-surfing or scraping together money for a few nights in a motel. And at the current 23% growth rate, Mayor Wilson will walk into office confronting a humanitarian emergency approaching 22,500 people.
Meanwhile, encampments proliferate, fentanyl deaths continue at historic highs, and families, businesses, and public workers bear the daily trauma of a system that is not working.
For years, Seattle has clung to the comforting illusion that more subsidized housing units alone will solve homelessness. Despite billions in public spending, housing pipelines remain clogged, construction timelines stretch into decades, and operating costs soar.
But for the majority of those living unsheltered — 78% of whom are struggling with serious mental illness or addiction — homelessness is not merely a housing shortage. It is the downstream consequence of untreated disease.
Often further complicating their illnesses is a condition called anosognosia that prevents them from recognizing their own illness. Consequently, they decline help not because they choose the street, but because their minds cannot see another path.
The mayor must change this trajectory.
If she intends to succeed where past administrations have failed, she must look to the <a href="https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2025/11/Local-Jurisdictions-Leverage-Homelessness-Reforms.pdf">Discovery Institute’s new report</a>, which details exactly how cities can harness forthcoming federal reforms to drive real results. 
Her reset must include:
<h3>1. Prioritize transitional and treatment-based recovery models</h3>
Seattle must stop investing disproportionately in permanent supportive housing that takes years to build and rarely addresses root causes. It must instead prioritize transitional recovery housing that is staffed with clinicians, case managers, and vocational supports, and must require engagement in these services as a condition of stay.
<h3>2. Partner with high-performing recovery organizations</h3>
Non-profits such as We Heart Seattle and Union Gospel Mission Rescue Missions have a great track record in helping individuals transition to stability. These organizations know how to walk with people through trauma, detoxification, relapse, and rebuilding. Make these organizations central to the city’s strategy — not an afterthought.
<h3>3. Empower and deploy multidisciplinary “CARE+” outreach units</h3>
Combine mental health professionals, emergency responders, and trained law enforcement to intervene proactively, stabilize crises, and compel psychiatric or addiction evaluations when individuals pose clear risks to themselves or others. Washington’s Involuntary Treatment Act already provides necessary tools, but they must be used more consistently and, of course, humanely.
<h3>4. Enforce public health and safety laws to restore order while providing pathways to treatment</h3>
In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court affirmed that Seattle can ban public camping to restore order and safety for all residents. In tandem with this effort, the city must provide the homeless with restorative programs.
<h3>5. Demand performance, not platitudes, at every level of the system</h3>
Seattle must instill accountability at every level of the homeless system: from the individual, to the non-profit, to the government officials responsible for the homeless system.
It must measure outcomes and provide quarterly dashboards on those outcomes and the spending required to achieve those outcomes. Housing without treatment is a revolving door. Harm reduction without recovery is slow-motion abandonment. But it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Katie, you have the chance to lead Seattle into a future where compassion is not a slogan, but a force that restores people and the city they call home.
This is your moment. History will remember the mayor who chose courage over habit, transformation over stagnation. Seattle’s soul is waiting to be mended. Now is the time to lead the city there.
* * *
Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @DiscoveryCWP.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
* * *
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Seattle Street with Homeless Encampment and Space Needle

‘Humanitarian Emergency’: Seattle’s New Mayor Must Bring An End To The City’s Homelessness Crisis

'Humanitarian Emergency': Seattle's New Mayor Must Bring An End To The City's Homelessness Crisis

Leftists

Mental Illness

Seattle

Washington State

A coalition of officials from 20 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over the government’s plan to overhaul an Obama-era approach to homelessness.
Nineteen state attorneys general and two governors joined the <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/washington-et-al-v-united-states-department-of-housing-and-urban-development-et-al-complaint-2025.pdf">lawsuit</a>, <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-sues-trump-administration-protect-billions-dollars-fight">led</a> by New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James. The lawsuit seeks to stop reforms to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s &#8220;Continuum of Care&#8221; program funding, which provides grants to groups that provide housing to homeless people and families.
The Trump administration plans to significantly reduce funds allocated to so-called “Housing First” providers. Under the department’s current homelessness grant structure, nearly all funding goes to providers that offer housing without requiring tenants to stay sober, pursue job training, or participate in other support services.
“HUD has adopted new policies, without any meaningful public input, that reverse the agency’s longstanding support for Housing First policies and fundamentally undermine the goal of providing dependable housing,” the lawsuit states. “A Housing First model provides stable housing to individuals without preconditions like sobriety or minimum income. It is a model that Congress, experts, and, until recently, HUD itself, have agreed improves housing stability and health while reducing costs.”
The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the Continuum of Care program “are unlawful several times over.”
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The Housing First strategy was introduced to federal programs under the administration of former President George W. Bush. Housing First was massively expanded under former President Barack Obama, who <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article24585973.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promised</a> in 2010 to eliminate homelessness within a decade with major reforms to the federal approach to homelessness.
Critics of Housing First say the strategy has led to a backsliding in efforts to combat homelessness in the United States. Critics argue that the approach falls short by failing to address the root causes of homelessness, such as economic insecurity, mental illness, and drug addiction.
A 2022 <a href="https://ciceroinstitute.org/research/housing-first-is-a-failure/">report</a> by the Cicero Institute shows that, contrary to the Obama administration’s 2010 aims, homelessness in the United States has significantly worsened in areas that rely on a Housing First approach. The study found that homelessness increased by nearly 25% in areas that exclusively rely on the Housing First model.
Rep. Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-republican-congressman-wants-to-end-the-progressive-policy-hurting-the-homeless">leading</a> an effort in Congress to address the federal government’s reliance on the housing first model. Barr, who is running to replace outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has introduced legislation to cut funding for housing providers that use the Housing First approach.
“Housing First policy shuts out providers who offer critical wraparound services that are often essential for helping individuals break the cycle of homelessness,” Barr said. “We need to abandon HUD’s exclusive reliance on Housing First in favor of an all-hands-on-deck approach to equip the best and most effective providers with the federal funds needed to end homelessness.”
The states suing include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the commonwealths of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

20 States Sue To Block Trump’s Cuts To Failed Obama Homelessness Policy

20 States Sue After Trump Makes Cuts To Failed Obama-Era Approach To Homelessness

Courts

Housing

Letitia James

Americans support stringent public safety measures when it comes to violent crime and homelessness, according to a new poll first shared with The Daily Wire.
The Cicero Institute’s annual National Public Safety Poll found that 75% of Americans believe violent crime is either going up or staying the same, with only 18% of those surveyed believing it’s going down. Meanwhile, 61% said they would back court mandates for “treatment and stabilization” of repeat offenders with a “history of mental illness.” 
In addition, 64% of those surveyed said they want it to be easier for people to be entered into mental health facilities if they have “violent tendencies.”
“Americans have made their voices heard. They want safe streets for their families, accountable solutions for homelessness, and serious repercussions when our justice system fails,” Stefani Buhajla, Senior Director of Communications for the Cicero Institute, said in a statement.
The new polling data comes amid a nationwide discussion about how to tackle crime in light of President Donald Trump ordering National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agencies into Washington, D.C., and other cities throughout the United States, like Memphis. The Wall Street Journal reported that the surge in Memphis has been considered a positive move by “many” residents, despite major pushback in other cities where the policy has been floated.
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For those with mental illness who are facing a conviction for “aggravated murder,” 46% said life in prison should be considered, 18% said the death penalty, and 18% said both should be weighed as options, compared with 17% who said neither should be a consequence.
“Voters have lost patience with activist leniency that endangers communities. They rightly want violent individuals removed from the streets and overwhelmingly support removing incompetent judges who repeatedly let them off with a slap on the wrist,” she continued.
Other noteworthy numbers from the poll were 60% saying that federal investigations should occur if states have a history of releasing “repeat violent criminals.” And 63% said a judge should be booted from their job if they are “too lenient” on violent offenders.
The poll also revealed heavy support for better tracking of sex offenders and mandating treatment or job programs in order to get “taxpayer-funded housing.”
The poll surveyed 2,102 likely voters, and results were weighted based on demographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement and the state election authorities.

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