OKPOLICY.ORG
President Trump recently signed an executive order expanding forced institutionalization of unhoused people with mental illness or substance use disorders. His administration has branded it as an act of “compassion” and “public safety.” Stripped of its veneer, it is neither. The measure tramples basic rights and drags America backwards in addressing homelessness. Such approaches have a long history of failure. They punish people for the conditions of poverty while failing to address the true drivers of homelessness and mental illness.
This order also represents a sharp break from Housing First, the only model proven to reduce homelessness while saving taxpayer dollars. Housing First begins with the obvious truth: people cannot heal without a roof over their heads. While some people require treatment and ongoing support to remain stably housed, those pathways are all but impossible without the foundation of safe, permanent shelter. Too often caricatured as “housing only,” the model is in fact rooted in the recognition that services succeed only when people first have a place to call home. By contrast, this directive elevates forced institutionalization as the answer, consigning individuals to hospitals, jails, or other facilities against their will – an approach with no record of producing stability, safety, or healing. The result is predictable: people experiencing homelessness come to distrust outreach workers, avoid shelters and services, and are pushed further to society’s margins.
History teaches us where this path leads. Civil commitment laws have long been used disproportionately against Black and Indigenous people, as well as communities of color more broadly – a pattern that continues to shape who is most likely to be institutionalized today. Until 1973, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, providing cover for the forced confinement of LGBTQ+ people. People with disabilities, too, were warehoused without consent for decades. These are not long-ago stories but urgent reminders of what happens when government detention powers expand unchecked. Weakening due process risks reviving those abuses, opening the door to enforcement based not on danger but on appearance, behavior, or the mere fact of being unhoused.
The administration insists this order will bring safety. The evidence says otherwise. Forced hospitalization does not reduce crime; it nearly doubles the risk of suicide, overdose, and violent behavior. Many of the charges most often brought against unhoused people – trespassing, petty theft, disorderly conduct – are survival acts. Mere confinement will not solve the issue, but housing and support will. Meanwhile, psychiatric facilities remain chronically underfunded and overcrowded, with states already straining to provide humane care for the people inside them. In Oklahoma, where the mental health system is already strained by severe fiscal shortfalls – and looming federal cuts – the burden of this executive order threatens to deepen an already fragile crisis.
What we do know is this: forced confinement inflicts harm. Trauma from institutionalization worsens mental health, and people discharged without stable housing are often funneled straight back into homelessness. It is a revolving door that strips away dignity while entrenching instability.
This executive order revives failed policies under the false banner of compassion. Real solutions are already known: Housing First, voluntary treatment, affordable housing, and community-based care – approaches consistently shown to save money, preserve dignity, and restore stability.
Forced confinement is not safety, and it is not compassion. It is punishment clothed as policy, and the newest chapter in a long history of failed approaches that have harmed rather than healed. Until we choose housing, treatment, and true investment over confinement, we will only deepen the crisis of homelessness and untreated mental illness – leaving more people in jails, on the streets, or in overcrowded hospitals instead of on a path to recovery.
