The homelessness crisis in Massachusetts continues to worsen. Trump and Harris have offered very different solutions to solve this.

“Many of them don’t want that,” he added. “But we will give them the option.”

The proposal, which some advocate for the homeless have compared to internment camps where Japanese Americans were held against their will during World War II is an extreme reflection of a larger trend. Across the country, a growing number of communities are choosing to criminalize homelessness, a choice that will likely become more common in the coming months. In Junethe US Supreme Court issued a decision enforcing the rights of Grants Pass, Oregon, to fine and jail homeless people who violate an ordinance against camping on public property, even when no shelter is available. Lower courts had ruled that the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Massachusetts, where until last fall there was a sprawling encampment at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as Mass. and Cass, is no exception. The past few weeks have been Autumn river And Lowell measures adopted The aim is to ban homeless camps in public spaces. The Brockton City Council is considering ordinances that would ban sleeping and loitering on public property, even if there is no shelter. Boston And Salem passed ordinances in 2023 banning camping on public property if emergency shelter is available.

The extent to which this trend continues will be influenced by the upcoming presidential elections. The two candidates offer starkly different views on how to deal with homelessness, and the results will have a major impact on the programs the federal government helps the states fund.

Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s chief rival in the presidential election, supports the approach that has been central to federal programs over the past decade, known as “Housing first.” The policy, which according to its proponents, is supported by a overwhelming amount of academic researchprioritizes getting homeless people into stable housing before providing the “wraparound” services needed to address larger issues like addiction and mental illness.

“People are more willing to accept treatment if they are and remain permanently housed,” said Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. “Housing First is not just housing. It’s about stabilizing them with a roof over their heads and then offering them services, without giving them a mandate to do so. And we notice that people are taking it.”

To facilitate Housing First policies, Harris supports programs such as expanding rental subsidies and providing working families up to $25,000 in the form of down payments, and offering a host of incentives aimed at encouraging the construction of low-cost new homes, under a plan unveiled in August. Advocates say they expect her to continue some of the Biden administration’s other policies focused on a housing approach.

Trump’s homelessness policy is consistent with a very different approach, suggesting that stabilized, permanent housing should only become available after certain treatment criteria are met, experts say.

The tent city “strategy will be far better and far cheaper than spending large amounts of taxpayer money to house the homeless in luxury hotels without addressing their underlying problem,” Trump said in his video. To help pay for his tent city proposal, Trump has said he would reverse a recent proposal The Biden administration’s policies are expanding health care coverage for young adult undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. since childhood and are working or studying under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

The Trump and Harris campaigns declined to make representatives available for an interview, but the Trump campaign provided a statement listing the policy that was also intended to encourage new construction and help homebuyers, and the Harris campaign referred questions through to a Biden administration policy adviser who provided a list. by administrative policy designed to reduce homelessness.

Some advocates worry about what would happen to the programs they rely on if Trump wins a second term. There are approximately 10,000 units in the state that provide supportive housing, many of which receive HUD funding under the Housing First policy, said Joyce Tavon, cchief executive officer of the Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance. HUD is also a major source of construction funds used to build new housing for the homeless.

In an interview with the Globe, Robert Marbut, who served as Trump’s homelessness czar in the final days of his administration, compared the housing approach, which became national policy under the Obama administration, to awarding an unlimited Pell Grant to a university. student without having to go to class or get high GPA or “a goal or program you are working toward.”

“They started giving away free housing without any accountability and without any treatment plan,” said Marbut, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. Center for Wealth and Povertya Seattle-based conservative free-market think tank, and has been in regular contact with the campaign. “It didn’t work.”

That’s not the case, says Jeff Olivet, who succeeded Marbut as executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the executive branch’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness.

“There’s a decades-long track record of housing first and foremost working very effectively for hundreds of thousands of people to help them get out of homelessness,” Olivet said.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration joined Republicans in pushing policies designed to increase household self-sufficiency and minimize reliance on government programs such as job training as a condition for housing vouchers.

Housing first emerged from experiments that followed the realization that these approaches weren’t working, Watts said. A systematic review The 26 studies comparing the two approaches found that housing-first programs reduced homelessness rates by 88 percent and improved housing stability by 41 percent, compared to treatment-first models, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research.

In response, Marbut highlighted the experience of California, where a law was passed in 2016 that prioritized housing programs, but the number of homeless and unsheltered people in the state increased by 47 percent between 2015 and 2019.

The commitment to Massachusetts has only continued to grow.

“I’ve been working on this issue for 25 years, and I’ve never seen so many people living in their cars and in tents,” said Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. “They cannot end up in family shelters. They cannot get into individual shelters because they are all full. It’s an avalanche.”

A sharp increase in the number of migrant families is partly responsible for this. But inflation and a shortage of affordable housing have also driven thousands of families to the brink. They now make up about half of the families needing emergency shelter, said Kelly Turley, deputy director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

Massachusetts is the only state in the country with a law designed to protect children by guaranteeing families the right to shelter. But in August 2023, the demand was so high, says Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency and the number of families the state will house was capped at 7,500. In July, state officials announced the costs of running the state’s emergency shelter system through the next fiscal year It was expected to exceed $1 billion.

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Adam Piore can be reached at [email protected].