President Trump signed executive order 14321 back in July, intentionally “ending support for ‘housing first’ policies.” He claimed that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s 21st Century policy of placing persons experiencing chronic homelessness into housing, without sobriety or mental health treatment barriers, “deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.”
The problem – according to HUD’s own statistics – Housing First is wildly successful. “A review of 26 studies found that a Housing First approach decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%.”
Keith Markel, one of more than 360,000 Pennsylvanians who live in HUD housing (7,100 in Bucks County) is one of those persons with a mental health diagnosis who – with a Housing First policy in place – finally found a home in early 2025.
Before Markel got his home in Perry County, he vacillated between living on the street or in the woods, brief stints in mental health facilities and getting picked up for public drunkenness – which came with fines and fees he was unable to pay.
Markel said that while living on the street, he was always scared. “There was a constant threat of [my] safety. Even if you could find a place to sleep. You didn’t feel safe. Because there’s predators out there that’ll take advantage of the homeless for no reason at all, even if you don’t have much.”
On the street and in shelters, Markel was attacked and robbed. One perp even tried to steal his shoes, but Markel woke up in time. “You sleep with one eye open.”
Now, Merkel receives treatment, takes his medicine. “I have a place, you know, a secure place where I can sleep. I can cook food. I can take a shower. I keep my place up. I like it.”
None of this surprises Bucks County state Rep. Jim Prokopiak, who has made housing affordability a cornerstone of his career. “It’s a lot easier for people to access services from a location they can return to every night. Having a roof over their head, allows them the stability to access the services they need.”
As to whether the president’s executive order guarantees successful, mandated treatment before housing assistance is granted, Prokopiak pushed back. “It’s much harder when you’re in a transient situation. Ideally, if our goal is to make sure that people are getting the help they need, the federal government is pushing farther and farther away from that goal.”
In Markel’s case – and countless others leading to the 41% housing stability statistic – Prokopiak’s assessment is exactly what happened. Since his living situation stabilized, his mental health condition has stabilized.
Markel hasn’t had a single incident since moving into his apartment. “I was on the streets. After four years, my mental illness started getting worse,” he recalled. “I was in and out of treatment facilities. I was in 11 mental health hospitals.”
Nicholas Emeigh, Executive Director of NAMI Bucks County – local affiliate of the National Alliance of Mental Illness – thinks housing and healthcare policy should remain in the hands of the experts. “I don’t necessarily think that this current administration is qualified to decide who is a better human than someone else and deserves [housing] more.”
Emeigh likewise pointed out that the congress and the president have passed legislation (like the Big Beautiful Bill) that make it more difficult for persons needing mental health or substance abuse assistance to get help.
He explained that mandating treatment as a barrier to housing made no sense when coupled with further restricting access to treatment. “What I think that state and federal administrations should focus on – instead of these wild ideas about cutting Medicaid and instead of proselytizing about people living with mental health conditions needing to be reparented and put in camps,” another provision of Executive Order 14321 provides for removal of people sleeping in public to homeless camps, “that they could take the money put toward those wild initiatives and put it toward housing programs.”
In the case of Housing First, that’s exactly what HUD did. In 2009, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the HEARTH act. Standing for Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing, the focus of HUD’s 2009, $1.6 billion shelter and continuum of care budget shifted from “emergency sheltering” to “emergency solutions.”
READ: National Homeless Rights Advocates Praise Democratic Pennsylvania Lawmakers’ ‘Shelter First’ Bill
Shelters and faith-based organizations lost funding as rapid re-housing based on the housing first model was implemented.
Sam Tsemberis, a clinical community psychologist and the originator of Housing First, explained that “they took money away from shelters and moved to permanent housing. Now we’re taking the money to permanent housing, moving it back to shelters.”
Tsemberis cautioned that Trump’s executive order has removed the barriers from what housing advocates call, “pray to stay,” the practice of requiring certain behaviors, life-style conformity and religious adherence. “Many of the shelters that are going to benefit from this are faith-based shelters. Like the evangelical shelter community, the missions. The missions do tremendous fundraising. It’s like $100,000,000 a year.”
“What this administration has done, is that it has removed the requirement to not proselytize and receive federal money.” This practice potentially forces a desperate individual into denying their own religion, sexuality or identity.
EO 14321 put it more innocuously, “Increasing competition among grantees through broadening the applicant pool; and holding grantees to higher standards of effectiveness in reducing homelessness and increasing public safety.”
Tsemberis translated this part of the president’s decree. “It has allowed programs, like missions, for example, to apply directly to HUD for funding and not have to go through the continuum care. They’ve absolutely opened the floodgates for putting money into a constituency that supports other kinds of issues,” – like proselytizing.
Religious leaders of shelters could – in theory – arbitrarily decide – and based on their faith – that being trans or gay or Muslim decreases public safety.
The Salvation Army – an organization whose individual chapters have themselves settled lawsuits for alleged anti-LGBTQIA practices – has stated that nearly a third of transgender individuals have been denied access to emergency shelters in the United States.
Tsemberis offered some hope in the short term as the president’s EO moves through the courts. “The strange thing about the executive order is that it names Housing First as a program that will not be funded.” But Housing First is a recommendation – a guideline when assigning vouchers. There is no pot of money that the president – even if he had the consent of congress – could instantly eliminate.
“It doesn’t actually exist on a budget item. It’s a political statement,” he said, explaining it’s the opposite of “the kind of stance around making people ready for housing by insisting on treatment and sobriety. All the things that we used to have before we had Housing First.” Before the 81% increase in housing of chronically homeless individuals.
Consequently, money diverted from the continuum of care to transitional, two-year housing that the president agreed to fund could be distributed based on the Housing First guidelines.
Prokopiak, Emeigh and Tsemberis agree that a better solution to the housing crisis is increased funding for housing and healthcare.
“Less than 1% of the federal budget goes to HUD,” Tsemberis explained. “They’re taking that tiny 1% and slicing it up different ways.”
Tsemberis blamed inadequate resources for the problem. “The need for homeless services is so much greater. It should be two, 3, 5% of the budget.” Therefore, the correct course of action, according to Tsemberis is to “add to the budget, do not politically pick one group and pit it against the other.”
Emeigh cautioned that requiring treatment before an individual qualifies to leave a shelter, a mission or the street expects miracles from an inadequately funded mental healthcare system. “I think that we do a good job locally here in Bucks County, but statewide and nationwide, you can’t call that a mental health system. It’s not a system. It’s just bits and pieces that we’ve sewn together.”
Requiring treatment sets an unreachable goal for many. “If we switch our focus from trying to put out fires, we could help people systemically. I think that we’d be on a better path than we currently are.”
Emeigh has little hope that setting up a system to help financially disadvantaged persons in need of mental healthcare is the current federal administration’s goal.“I don’t think that it’s necessarily politically popular to focus on things that help disadvantaged people, because disadvantaged people are not the ones funding campaigns.”
Prokopiak cautioned that this isn’t just about the economically disadvantaged, especially in Pennsylvania where nearly half of all tenants are “rent burdened.”
“We have a housing affordability problem here in Pennsylvania and especially here in Bucks County – for people across the spectrum, whether it be low income workers, whether it be middle income workers, or even those people in the upper middle class are all having a tough time finding places to live.”
Among the representative’s many proposed responses to the crisis, Prokopiak’s HB 914 limits how much larger landlords may raise rents.
Meanwhile Prokopiak emphasized that putting vulnerable populations at risk of long-term sustained homelessness will not help the situation, nor will demanding they get treatment.
Prokopiak anticipates the trickle-down trauma that EO 14321 will cause. “As we look at policies that are coming from Washington D.C., those policies tend to further strain the resources of local and state taxpayers. The federal government is walking away from so many of these priorities.”
Prokopiak noted the commonwealth can’t fill the void. “We don’t have the resources necessarily to fill the gaps that are being created by the federal government. It’s leading to people losing their health insurance, to losing their housing.”
With election day looming, Pokopiak reminded voters they can make their voices heard on Nov. 3. “Ultimately, people have to decide whether or not that’s something that they are in favor of. Because, make no mistake, we’ve seen steep cuts in healthcare funding from the Big, Beautiful Bill. We’ve seen that these policies are eliminating the safety net for so many of our working families.”
And from individuals like Keith Markel.
