MICHELE STEEB: The Consequential Link In Ending Street Chaos: Compassion Plus Accountability

America’s streets have reached a breaking point. Encampments sprawl across sidewalks, untreated mental illness and addiction fuel disorder, and public spaces once vibrant with life have become zones of despair.

President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders—Ending Disorder on America’s Streets and Addressing Crime and Beautification in D.C.—finally confront this decade-long humanitarian crisis head-on.

By directing federal resources to dismantle encampments and enforce laws against public disorder, these orders mark a long-overdue acknowledgment: the nation’s crisis is one of homelessness, but also one of public safety, public health, and human dignity.

For too long, progressive policies have allowed the sickest among us to deteriorate before our eyes, abandoned in the name of “compassion.” (RELATED: DC Homeless Guy Doesn’t Regret Voting For Trump Even Though His Tents Got Thrown Out)

The president’s bold actions open the door to a new era—one in which compassion is measured not by inaction, but by the will to intervene, save lives, and restore communities.

But make no mistake: these executive orders alone will not turn the tide. Relentless follow-through and accountability will be required across all tiers of the new system.

Success will demand building new programs; it will also require they are adequately and professionally staffed, guided by the right interventions for people who are too sick to self-refer, and backed by the political will to hold local leaders—from social workers to judges to elected officials— accountable.

The anosognosia factor, while rarely discussed, is key.

Roughly 80% of homeless adults struggle with the diseases of mental illness, addiction, or both. Among those, the majority also live with anosognosia—a neurological condition that prevents them from recognizing the depths of their diseases. These individuals will never “self-refer” to treatment, no matter how many programs we build for them.

Federal aid must be tied to measurable action by states and local governments to include reforms to involuntary treatment laws, expanded use of conservatorships, and execution on the proactive connection of the sickest individuals to care.

Too many jurisdictions still equate compassion with “laissez faire” neglect, meaning that they do not encourage enforcement of conservatorships and civil commitment laws.

But even when treatment beds are available, they cannot save lives if there are too few trained professionals to staff them.

Across the country, 41 states report shortages of social workers with master’s degrees, and 36 report shortages of licensed behavioral health counselors, including mental health therapists and addiction specialists.

In California—an epicenter of this crisis—the shortages span nearly every behavioral health profession, from psychiatric nurses to addiction counselors.

Staffing shortages, however, are not the only concern.

At Seattle’s $244 million, 150-bed University of Washington Medicine’s Center for Behavioral Health and Learning—built to serve patients under the state’s Involuntary Treatment Act—only 35 patients a day are being served. Less than one year after opening, the facility laid off 32 staff members.

The problem isn’t a lack of need or professional capacity— it’s the failure of elected leaders to compel treatment for the sickest individuals.

Seattle, also considered an epicenter, illustrates a starkly different challenge from California’s crisis. Here, the shortage is not in qualified professionals but in the political will to compel treatment for those in acute crisis. Left untreated, these individuals are spiraling deeper into illness and risk of death, while beds sit empty, professionals lose jobs, and taxpayers bankroll a system that refuses to use the tools it already has.

The American Behavioral Health System in Port Angeles, Washington, recently faced the same problem.

With the federal government now willing to fund and require treatment services, it must demand and monitor measurable results:

• Occupancy Requirements — Facilities receiving federal dollars must operate at or near capacity to ensure beds are filled and lives are saved.

• Workforce Investment — Funding must incentivize universities to train, recruit, and retain specialists for high-acuity patients.

• Accountability Metrics — State and local governments must meet clear performance benchmarks or forfeit funding.

Anything less will leave us with gleaming, multimillion-dollar monuments to inaction while the most impaired languish on barbaric streets.

Leaders at every rung of the system must embrace and follow through on “compassionate compulsion”— intervening when people cannot or will not seek help themselves.

They must replace over-reaching harm-reduction experiments with genuine harm elimination.

President Trump’s executive orders chart the right course, but only relentless follow-through will deliver results. That means building treatment beds, staffing them with qualified professionals, and ensuring they are occupied by those in need.

More than a million homeless Americans are battling mental illness and addiction. They deserve a real chance at recovery, and their communities deserve the safety and stability that comes when disorder is replaced with care and accountability.

As the nation’s largest funder of homelessness programs, the federal government must hold local and state agencies to account—or risk watching this opportunity slip away and the crisis deepen beyond repair.

Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @ DiscoveryCWP.

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