On Aug. 11, 2025, the president announced he would deploy police and National Guard troops to clear homeless encampments from Washington. Now what? Where will people go?
I think we can all agree that “unsheltered homelessness” is an unacceptable national systems failure. The fact that people must resort to sleeping on the street in our nation’s capital is itself a travesty. How is it that in the most advanced country in the world, at the wealthiest time in history, people are languishing on our sidewalks? With renewed national attention, let’s seize this moment to finally address street homelessness with pragmatic solutions that actually work — and at scale.
Ironically, the motivation to end street homelessness transcends partisan divides. Across the country, addressing unsheltered homelessness is a top priority for cities and municipalities of all political leanings. For liberals, leaving our fellow citizens to suffer and die on our streets is a moral outrage. For conservatives, the cost to taxpayers is staggering. In this era of fiscal restraint, solving street homelessness fast and cost-effectively is not just compassionate but pragmatic.
Most Americans don’t realize the true fiscal impact of people living on the streets. It costs society an average of ~$80,000 per person per year in street outreach, preventable emergency room visits, police interactions, encampment sweeps, and cleanup of sidewalks littered with feces and needles. By contrast it costs ~$40,000 to provide meals, shelter, and care. Nor do we fully comprehend the environmental devastation caused by human debris in our waterways or fires in our canyons.
The humanitarian cost is even greater. The longer a person stays on the streets, the more devastating the impacts on mental and physical health: a 25-35 year shorter life expectancy and trauma that is often irreversibly incapacitating. The damage extends beyond individuals: lost human potential, strains on the economy, and a blow to our collective conscience.
Yet despite this urgency, we remain paralyzed — resigned to the false belief that street homelessness is inevitable. I refuse to accept that. We’ve sent men to the moon and mapped the human genome. Surely we can find a way to provide four walls and a roof for our fellow human souls. As the founder and CEO of DignityMoves, a nonprofit dedicated to ending street homelessness, I fundamentally believe that with pragmatism and political will, it can be done.
Sweeping humans down the street merely creates a momentary, hyper-local illusion of progress.
If we are going to expend resources to clear encampments, we need strategies that actually work. Trump has talked about moving people “far, far away” — but sweeping humans down the street merely creates a momentary, hyper-local illusion of progress. And criminalizing unsheltered homelessness floods our already overcrowded jails. To end the era of encampments, we must end the need for encampments.
A promising model called “interim supportive housing” is effective and proven to actually solve the problem. By using prefabricated, relocatable cabins on temporarily vacant land, we can create communities quickly and at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing. In these safe, dignified spaces, supported by wrap-around services and treatment options, people have the best chance of returning to stability. They can take a breath and chart a path forward in their lives.
We have ample public land available for this. In fact, Trump’s recent Executive Order requires underutilized federal land be made available for housing. The administration’s recent policy of accelerating the manufactured housing industry ensures ample U.S.-made modular housing options are available.
Consider Washington: roughly 800 people live unsheltered there today. With just 6–8 cabin communities, every single person could be indoors within a few months — at a cost of less than $60 million. For perspective, that’s what we spend on our defense budget in just 38 minutes.
In selecting a strategy, our goal should be solutions with the highest probability of people returning to contributing members of society. If people are in unstable circumstances, such as refugee camp-type accommodations, the human fight-or-flight crisis mode hinders their ability to solve problems or get well. It’s a game changer when people have their own private space. Trump has correctly emphasized the need to offer treatment options, which will be far more effective when people are safe and stable.
Washington is just the start. Mayors across the country should be empowered to use federal, state, and local public land for cabin communities — places where people can receive shelter, treatment, and care. It’s a win-win for cities, taxpayers, and, most important, the human beings who deserve dignity and stability.
We have the tools. We have the knowledge. What we need now is the will. Let’s seize this moment and finally do it right. Working together, we can end unsheltered homelessness.