The Disability Community Has a Homelessness Problem- Trump Has a Solution

Credit: Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

Coming soon to city streets across the United States near you: people, locked up for the crime of experiencing barriers- rooted in systemic racism, transphobia, and, yes, even lateral ableism- to #BigDisCo’s $200 billion dollar array of disability services and supports. With the Executive Order (EO) issued July 24, 2025, the current Administration singled out over a quarter of a million people they would like to see institutionalized long term, unhoused people who are “addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.” And, notwithstanding a few tepid protestations via social media posts, #BigDisCo has yet to issue even a strongly worded sign-on letter of objection, perhaps because disability advocacy has always looked the other way when it comes to people who are disabled in ways that do not fit #BigDisCo’s narrative regarding people with disabilities, including:

-melanated people

-trans people

-people disabled by mental illness

-people disabled by trauma

-people with criminal records

-queer youth

-youth who age out of foster home settings

-people who self-medicate with illegal substances due to barriers to access to competent mental healthcare providers

-homeless people

(It should be noted here that #BigDisCo has a long history of seeking out individuals who possess one or more of the aforementioned identities who they otherwise deem to be “good cultural fits” for inclusion- and, more importantly, people that #BigDisCo can point to when attempts to call out bigotry within #BigDisCo are raised.)

Despite the fact that 77% of people with mental illness engage in self-medicating behaviors, including between 20-40% of people who use illicit drugs and/or alcohol, often because of barriers to access to competent mental health providers/treatment, disability advocacy has always drawn a line around people with substance use disabilities- by definition, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) places any people using illegal drugs outside of the definition of protected disability. 

Post-ADA disability advocacy has been increasingly antipathetic to the 274,224 people targeted in the EO. For instance, disability advocates in communities around the country have filed ADA lawsuits complaining that homeless encampments obstruct sidewalk paths of travel. 

And, despite efforts to bring awareness to what is known as “institutional bias”, disability advocacy has never embraced wholesale abolition of institutional settings as a priority. In fact, disability advocacy has often relied on both carefully cultivating a definition of “institution” in order to exclude settings like prisons, jails, foster homes (50% of foster kids are disabled), and homeless shelters (Easterseals reports that 40% of homeless people are disabled and the EO in question notes that nearly two-thirds of unhoused people experience mental illness), often drawing a line between people who “deserve” to be institutionalized and over-policed, i.e. “criminals” (according to the US Department of Justice, upwards of 40% of people who are incarcerated are disabled) who should be subject to electronic tracking. Disability advocacy has never been particularly concerned with non-physical, non-developmental disabilities, and other disabilities that tend to fall outside of the rigid purview of HCBS; notwithstanding advocacy to close many state-run psychiatric institutions at the end of the 1900’s, Medicaid waiver programs generally do not allow long term service and supports for people who do not experience a level of care that aligns with physical support needs.

Which is not to say that “community based” long term care programs for people with mental health disabilities do not exist. Indeed, unlicensed care homes and other unlicensed settings exist in various forms all over the place. Disability Rights California spent fifteen years studying these “last ditch options before homelessness”, The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) sounded an alarm about the potential for abuse in these homes ten years ago.

"Civil", or involuntary, commitment, another area which #BigDisCo has not focused any great amount of attention to abolishing, provides the inroad for the EO’s rounding up of unhoused, disabled people. Demand for inpatient  psychiatric “beds” has exceeded capacity for years; using a non-criminal court proceedings to remand unhoused and disabled people to custody will necessitate having a place to send people. The administration has already signaled support for the development of “wellness farms” and other similar “camps".

A $50 million appropriation was included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” for the creation of a new HCBS waiver.

Easterseals, a key supporter of the waiver as well as one of the few #BigDisCo representatives at the table when this new waiver was being created, has member organizations with camp facilities located in a number of states.

Connect the dots and see the picture.

“I’d rather go to jail than die in a nursing home… ”

#BigDisCo has spent 50 years building community-based organizations- with hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of federal and state funding- that serve less than ten percent of the total disability population. The Independent Living network has devoted their considerable resources to locating offices in “safe” locations, far away from people who rely on public transit in general, let alone unhoused people. Disability service agencies have done their level best to prohibit disabled people with too many barriers to accessing HCBS from accessing their help. #BigDisCo has centered advocacy that addressed the concerns of HCBS enrollees, ie the members of the community that have a revenue stream attached to them, including parking, website accessibility, air travel, keeping city sidewalks unimpeded by homeless people, carving HCBS enrollees out of proposed legislation that could be detrimental to them (as well as others, including disabled people who are not HCBS enrollees), and, most significantly, increasing HCBS funding. Conversely, #BigDisCo leaves unchallenged the systems of oppression and its corresponding facilities- incarcerated settings, mental institutions, foster homes, and the aforementioned soon-to-come “wellness farms” to further solidify homeless people, as well as those at-risk for homelessness, as a “problem” and not an indication of #BigDisCo’s failure to live up to the promises it made during the aftermath of Willowbrook:

Namely, that it would, with the financial support of state and federal government, facilitate the end of institutions and the inclusion of ALL people with disabilities into mainstream society.

Which creates a paradigm where, although anyone can become a member of the disability community at any time, depending on their disability type, as well as other identifying factors, their status within the community may very well be that of “homeless person”, which, under the current Administration, earmarks them for long-term institutionalization.