Trump’s Vision for the Homeless Is Already Here

Forcing the most vulnerable among us into institutions only perpetuates their trauma. I know, because I’ve lived it.

When President Donald Trump released the sinisterly titled Executive Order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” my immediate thought was that I knew where this was headed. Scattered throughout was language alleging “care,” “treatment,” and “safety,” as the Executive Order clearly outlines plans to mass-institutionalize people experiencing homelessness or perceived mental disability. My suspicions were confirmed.

My second thought was, “This is already here.” From Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom’s “CARE courts” to the massively profitable psychiatric-industrial complex, people caught between the intersection of ableism and other forms of oppression have long been subjected to involuntary treatment, shrouded by the more appeasing definition of “care.” I know because I’ve lived through it.

I first experienced involuntary psychiatric institutionalization when I was thirteen years old. I was experiencing abuse in my family home in suburban Chicago. Unable to find a way out of my situation, I sank into a deep depression. I stopped sleeping and eating. I wanted to feel safety and agency over my life, and absent that, I didn’t want to live at all.

But in the psychiatric ward that I was placed in, safety and agency were nowhere to be found. Having a psychiatric diagnosis eschewed accountability for the harm I had experienced, and I became the problem—the only one. My behavior was labeled by clinicians and staff as pathological and troubling, rather than a natural result of the violence that had caused my distress. I told one clinician about some of the abuse at home, which she dismissed, and I quickly learned that it would be safer not to say anything at all.