It is estimated more than 2,600 people live on the streets across Arkansas.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has proposed a "treatment first" plan, which includes moving unhoused people into camps.

Neil Sealy, senior organizer for Arkansas Community Organizations, said the proposal does not address the root cause of homelessness.

"There are a lot of homeless people who have addiction problems and they need help, but they also need to have a safe place to live," Sealy pointed out. "Putting them in an internment camp is outrageous and it's punitive and it needs to be stopped."

Sealy noted Arkansas has been in a housing crisis since the 1980s and additional cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development will make things worse. The number of unhoused people increased 6% between 2022 and 2023.

The president has not made a formal announcement about his homelessness plans but cuts have been made to programs supporting efforts to help unsheltered people across the country. During his campaign, Trump said unhoused people would be moved into tent cities and required to undergo mental health or drug treatment. Sealy emphasized not everyone who lives on the streets needs such services.

"That is not the only cause of homelessness," Sealy underscored. "There are all kinds of situations in life that -- when your money is gone -- and when you're now going to cut subsidized housing and you're not going to build more housing, but if they find you on the streets you're going to stay in a tent."

The president said the administration will work with people who are down on their luck to reintegrate them into a normal life. He added those refusing treatment would be jailed.

Sealy contended with fewer federal dollars, the Arkansas economy will worsen and lawmakers need to hear from their constituents.

"Call their House of Representatives, their Congressman or woman, or their Senator and keep calling," Sealy urged. "Then seek out organizations like ours who are building a resistance. We just have to push back hard."


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Minnesota's legislative session is hovering around its endpoint and lawmakers found extra room in the budget to expand affordable housing.

Those assisting renters and aspiring homeowners said it helps but the resource gap remains wide. The housing finance bill sent to the governor includes an extra $15 million to support programs keeping people in their homes amid rising costs or create pathways to secure housing. The Legislature was looking to trim spending this session.

Libby Murphy, director of policy for the Minnesota Housing Partnership, was happy to see bipartisanship prevent taking a big step backward.

"One in every four households is getting some type of federal or state rental assistance," Murphy pointed out. "That speaks to the volume of the need. So, we're grateful for these investments. We're grateful that housing did see an increase in spending."

Still, she noted it is disappointing a $75 million increase was whittled down. A March report from the partnership said the state has a housing shortage of nearly 100,000 units. It showed wages have failed to keep pace with housing costs, including for the state's most in-demand workers, such as registered nurses. A program benefiting from new spending focuses on homeownership opportunities for those workers.

Murphy acknowledged this year's investment pales in comparison to the historic $1.3 billion housing package from the 2023 session but added it was an outlier and initiatives from the aid package are still coming together, as expected.

"Things like Bring It Home Rental Assistance, which is a more permanent rental assistance program, that is still getting up and running," Murphy explained. "Other brick and mortar programs, it often takes those resources a few years to get out the door."

Other assistance groups said higher interest rates are getting in the way of some affordable housing projects taking off. Another new investment this year includes boosting grants for rural communities to get started on housing infrastructure, making their communities more attractive to developers.


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Rents in Los Angeles were already high before the firestorm earlier this year, but now a coalition of housing groups is suing six landlords for price gouging.

In California, it is generally illegal to raise rents more than 10% following an emergency declaration, but the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy has found many units where advertised rates jumped 25% to almost 50%.

Heeyoung Linda Park, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a co-counsel for the plaintiffs, has been watching the activity.

"When they tracked these rental prices, they found hundreds of properties illegally gouging rents, and so there were so many that they eventually had to recruit volunteers to help them track the listings and identify the worst offenders," Park said.

Attempts to reach the defendants for comment were unsuccessful. The first court appearance is scheduled for later this summer. The City of Los Angeles is seeking $62 million in damages in a separate lawsuit against different landlords.

Rodney Leggett, an attorney with the Housing Rights Center, is also a co-counsel for the plaintiffs alongside the Western Center on Law & Poverty and the California Center for Movement Legal Services.

"We find it very exploitive to sort of take advantage of people when they're most desperate, including people who have been displaced as a result of the wildfires," he said.

More than 16,000 structures were destroyed by the Palisades and Eaton fires, adding more pressure to an already-stretched rental market.


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A new report on homelessness in Colorado released by the Common Sense Institute has come under fire for muddying the waters for lawmakers and other stakeholders working to get people off the streets and back on their feet.

The report claimed an Intervention First model, where people only get housing if they agree to addiction treatment and workforce training, is more effective than the Housing First with Supportive Services approach, which it said has failed to decrease homelessness.

Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said the report does not even mention rising housing costs.

"When we see housing costs go up, when we see rents increase, we see homelessness increase," Alderman pointed out. "When we don't see more affordable housing being made available to low-income households, we see homelessness increase."

Between 2019 and 2023, Denver's already high rents rose by nearly 30%. Last year, there was a gap of more than 134,000 affordable housing units across the state for workers earning 30% of the median income or less. The Institute defended its report and said by email the public deserves to know whether their tax dollars are helping reduce homelessness, not just reshuffling where people sleep.

According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, Housing First reduces homelessness by 88% and improves housing stability by 41% compared with Intervention First programs, which Alderman called a one-size-fits-all approach.

"It said you must participate with those specific services in order to be eligible for housing," Alderman noted. "There are lots of people experiencing homelessness that don't need substance-use treatment, that don't need behavioral health. They need housing."

Housing First programs provide rapid access to housing and care teams connect people to employment opportunities, medical and mental health care and substance use treatment but the services are not required or used as a punitive tool.

Alderman stressed the model works but current investments do not meet the scale of the problem.

"If we had the housing resources and we were providing more housing with supportive services to larger populations of people experiencing homelessness, we would absolutely see a reduction in homelessness," Alderman asserted. "But we've never had the political will to do that."