During a fundraising trip to California this week, President Donald Trump hinted at his administration's imminent crackdown on the state's homelessness crisis. Speaking as he disembarked from Air Force One in the Bay Area yesterday, he deplored the fact that “we have people living in our best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings, where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes.” The problem had gotten so bad, he said, that “our policemen on the beat are getting sick.”
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson flew to California the same day to detail the administration's plans for dealing with the crisis. Carson was vague on the details of the administration's approach, but previous reporting in The Washington Post had suggested that the White House was proposing to demolish tent cities in San Francisco and Los Angeles, increase the “role of police” in monitoring homelessness, and potentially incarcerate the homeless in government-run facilities.
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