Crime, and the public’s perception of it, impacts the ability of America’s downtowns to recover from the pandemic. IDA supports federal policies that enable each community to tailor solutions to address their unique needs. 

Content and Resources: 

• Issue Brief:  Fighting Organized Retail Crime
• Issue Brief: Making Downtowns Safe for Everyone
• IDA Issue Backgrounder: Public Safety 
• Press Release: Law Enforcement and Retail Industry Leaders Call on Congress to Pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act
• Letter: IDA Backs Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act 
• IDA Publication: Public Safety Initiatives   
• IDA Publication: Downtown Districts at the Table: Planning for Safety and Security

Homelessness touches Americans from all walks of life. IDA is working to increase investments that help communities across the country not only get people off the streets, but into permanent housing.  

Content and Resources: 

• Issue Brief:  Ending Homelessness
• IDA Issue Backgrounder: Homelessness 
• IDA Issue Backgrounder: Homelessness, Mental Health and Substance Use • IDA, Coalition Letter to Congress on HUD CoC Changes
• IDA Publication: Evolving Homeless Services 
• IDA Publication: Homelessness in Urban Districts: Principles & Implications for Place Managers 

As downtowns across America confront a post-pandemic world of remote working and reduced demand for office space, IDA is working to help urban place management organizations adapt and foster vibrant city centers. 

Content and Resources:

• Take Action: Ask your members of Congress to cosponsor the Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act!
• Press Release: New Bill Will Revitalize America’s Downtowns While Boosting Affordable Housing
• Issue Brief:  Affordable Housing Conversions 
• One Pager: Learn More about the Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act
• Opinion: Why Saving Downtown is Key to our COVID-19 Economic Recovery-Roll Call 
• IDA Issue Backgrounder: Placemaking

Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets (7/24/25). Encourages states and localities to use civil commitment procedures to “shift” unhoused persons into long-term institutional settings.  

Among other provisions, the EO: 

• Directs the Department of Justice (DOJ) to seek to reverse court precedents and end consent decrees that stand in the way of civil commitment procedures and to provide support to states and localities to implement civil commitment policies.  
• Directs multiple agencies to determine whether various grant programs can be prioritized towards states and localities that enforce prohibitions on urban camping/squatting and promote civil commitment. 
• Directs multiple agencies to determine whether various grant programs can be prioritized towards states and localities that enforce prohibitions on urban camping/squatting and promote civil commitment.  
• Directs DOJ to determine whether federal resources can be used to ensure that detainees with mental health issues are not released into the public due to a lack of bed capacity and to prioritize funding for the expansion of drug and mental health courts.
• Directs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure that grants do not go towards “harm reduction” and “safe consumption” programs in which people with substance use disorders can be given drugs; and to support outpatient treatment programs move patients out of public programs and into “private housing and support networks.”  
• Directs HUD to require grantees to collect health-related information on people in their programs and share that data with law enforcement.  

Below is a more detailed summary of the executive order. 

Section 1.  Purpose and Policy. The EO states that “[e]ndemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.”  It states that “[t]he overwhelming majority” of unhoused individuals “are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both,” and that 2/3ds of the homeless population “report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes.” 

The EO asserts that “[t]he Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.” 

The EO states that “[s]hifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.” 

Sec. 2.  Restoring Civil Commitment. The EO directs DOJ, in consultation with HHS, to work to reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees that impede the aforementioned policy of “encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.” 

It also directs DOJ to provide technical assistance and grants to state and local governments to help them adopt and implement “maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and ‘step-down’ treatment standards that allow for the appropriate commitment and treatment of individuals with mental illness who pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.” 

Sec. 3.  Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets. The EO directs DOJ, HHS, HUD and DOT to asses their grant programs and “determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet” certain criteria, which include: 

• enforcing prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting; 

• enforcing standards that provide either assisted outpatient treatment or use of civil commitment to get them into treatment centers for people who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves. 

• implementing and complying with the registration and notification obligations of the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act 

The EO also directs DOJ to ensure that “homeless individuals arrested for Federal crimes are evaluated  . . . to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment,” and make sure that funding is available under the Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance program to support  encampment removal efforts. 

It also directs DOJ to assess whether federal resources can be directed towards ensuring that “detainees with serious mental illness are not released into the public because of a lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals;” and increase requirements that prisons and residential re-entry centers under DOJ’s authority or get DOJ funding “require in-custody housing release plans and, to the maximum extent practicable, require individuals to comply.” 

Sec. 4.  Redirecting Federal Resources Toward Effective Methods of Addressing Homelessness. The EO directs HHS to ensure that grants issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery fund only “evidence-based programs” and not “programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called ‘harm reduction’ or ‘safe consumption’ efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.” 

It also directs HHS to provide technical assistance to assisted outpatient treatment programs for individuals with serious mental illness or addiction both “during and after the civil commitment process focused on shifting such individuals off of the streets and public programs and into private housing and support networks;” and make sure that funds for Federally Qualified Health Centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics “reduce rather than promote homelessness by supporting . . . comprehensive services for individuals with serious mental illness and substance use disorder, including crisis intervention services.” 

The EO directs DOJ to prioritize funding to “support the expansion of drug courts and mental health courts for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety.” 

Sec. 5.  Increasing Accountability and Safety in America’s Homelessness Programs. The EO directs HHS and HUD to take steps to “increase accountability” in homelessness assistance and transitional living programs, including ending support for “housing first” policies; “increasing competition among grantees through broadening the applicant pool,” and “holding grantees to higher standards of effectiveness in reducing homelessness and increasing public safety.” 

It also directs HUD to make sure that Federal housing and homelessness assistance grant recipients increase requirements that persons participating in their programs who suffer from substance use disorder or serious mental illness take part in substance abuse treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation. 

It directs DOJ to review whether recipients of Federal housing and homelessness assistance that operate drug injection sites or “safe consumption sites,” knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia, or permit the use or distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control are in violation of Federal law, and it directs HUD to review whether such recipients are violating the terms of the Federal assistance they receive, 

It also directs HUD to change regulations to allow . . . “federally funded programs to exclusively house women and children and to stop sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance through such programs from being housed with unrelated children.” 

It requires HUD, in consultation with DOJ and HHS, to “allow or require the recipients of Federal funding for homelessness assistance to collect health-related information that [HUD] identifies as necessary to the effective and efficient operation of the funding program” and “require those funding recipients to share such data with law enforcement authorities . . . and to use the collected health data to provide appropriate medical care to individuals with mental health diagnoses or to connect individuals to public health resources.” 

Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture (1/20/25) Revives a policy on the design of federal buildings he instituted in his first term but was revoked by President Biden. It requires the General Services Administration (GSA) to make recommendations to “advance the policy that federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” 

Restoring Common Sense to Federal Office Space Management (4/15/25) Repeals longstanding requirements that federal facilities be sited in central business districts and repurpose, to the extent prudent, historic buildings. 

Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again (8/28/25) Establishes as Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture that “classical and traditional architecture are preferred modes of architectural design.” EO also requires GSA to ensure that “GSA architects whose duties include reviewing, assisting with, or approving the selection of architects or designs for applicable Federal public buildings have formal training in, or substantial and significant experience with, classical or traditional architecture.” 

President Trump has issued several executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and DEIA (DEI plus accessibility) programs in the federal government – and beyond.  

Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (1/20/25) Requires federal agencies to “terminate” all DEI and DEIA “mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear.”  

The order requires agencies to report to the White House any “federal grantees who received federal funding to provide or advance DEI, DEIA, or ‘environmental justice’ programs, services, or activities” since the start of former President Biden’s term in 2021. It also requires agencies to end “equity-related” federal grants or contracts.  

As a result of this order, many federal agencies have eliminated their DEI programs, placed personnel working on such programs on administrative leave and scrubbed references to DEI from their websites. It is not clear from the executive order what constitutes a “DEI” program, and numerous longer-term programs that provide benefits specifically for underrepresented groups may be impacted.   

Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (1/21/25) Calls for “measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.” It directs federal agencies to identify up to nine entities each – including publicly traded corporations, large non-profits, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, and institutions of higher education with endowments – to be investigated for civil rights violations arising from DEI programs.  

NOTE: A federal district court issued a nationwide injunction blocking both EOs in February 2025, but the Fourth Circuit vacated the injunction in February 2026, letting the EOs stand for now while the case continues on remand. Another lawsuit was filed on 4/2026, by the American Association of University Professors, the National Association of Minority Contractors and others on different grounds.  

In addition, the City of Seattle filed suit in July 2025, arguing the orders threaten Seattle’s federal grants with vague “illegal DEI” language unrelated to the actual projects being funded, exposing the city to False Claims Act risk. A district court granted a preliminary injunction. It is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which has stayed the appeal pending a decision in a related case involving Trump administration grant conditions. 

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking (8/7/26) Requires federal agencies to review grants to ensure that they are consistent with agency priorities “and the national interest,” including ensuring they do not “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate . . . racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination . . . denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic, illegal immigration, or any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.” 

NOTE: In May 2026, the White House Office of Management and Budget published a proposed rule to revise federal grantmaking regulations to align with this EO.  

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against this EO, including by the cities of Seattle and Fresno, CA. They are still pending in the courts. 

Among the numerous orders the Trump administration has issued regarding immigration are several that target sanctuary jurisdictions. 

Protecting The American People Against Invasion (1/20/25) Directs the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds.”   

The order also suggests that any jurisdiction identified as a “sanctuary” city or state would be denied any federal funding for any purpose, although the constitutionality of this is unclear. 

NOTE: This EO is the subject of nearly 10 separate lawsuits, with several cases now sitting before the Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. 

Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders (2/19/25). Requires federal agencies to “ensure, consistent with applicable law, that Federal payments to States and localities do not, by design or effect, facilitate the subsidization or promotion of illegal immigration, or abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation” and requires agencies to “refer any improper receipt or use of Federal benefits” to undocumented immigrants to DOJ and DHS “for appropriate action.” 

NOTE: This EO has faced numerous lawsuits, with multiple preliminary and/or permanent injunctions issued against its implementation for certain federal agencies. However, a final disposition is still pending in the courts. 

Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens (4/28/25) Takes additional steps targeting sanctuary cities. The order directs the Attorney General to publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions and “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures to end . . . violations and bring [sanctuary] jurisdictions into compliance with the laws of the United States.” It further directs all federal agencies to “identify appropriate Federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination,” among other provisions.  

NOTE: On August 5, 2025, the Justice Department published a list of states, cities, and counties that it identifies as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” which it defines as “having policies, laws, or regulations that impede enforcement of federal immigration laws.” DOJ’s list is here. According to DOJ, cities, states or counties it defines as a sanctuary jurisdiction are those that do one or more of the following:  

• Publicly declare themselves a sanctuary jurisdiction or equivalent.  
• Enact laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other formalized practices that “obstruct or limit local law enforcement cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”  
• Limit whether and how local agencies share information about immigration status of detainees with federal authorities.  
• Prohibit local funds or resources from being used to support federal immigration enforcement efforts.  
• Provide training to city employees and police on enforcing sanctuary policies and declining to respond to ICE requests for information.  
• Refuse to honor ICE detainer requests unless there is a warrant signed by a judge.  
• Restrict ICE agents’ ability to interview detainees absent detainee consent.  
• Create dedicated offices to engage and advise undocumented immigrant populations on “evading federal law enforcement officers.”  
• Provide undocumented immigrants with access to benefits, including health care assistance, legal aid, food and housing assistance, and other subsidies.  

On April 24, 2025, a federal judge in California barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional. The administration has appealed. 

Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship (1/20/25) Seeks to end “birthright citizenship” for individuals born in the U.S. whose parents are undocumented immigrants. 

NOTE: This EO was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 30, 2026. 

The Trump administration has issued a number of executive orders intended to address the public’s concerns about public safety.  

Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (1/20/25) Directs the Attorney General and other administration officials to determine whether cartels, such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), should be designated as terrorist organizations, which would enable the government to utilize military and intelligence resources to go after them.  

NOTE: On March 15, 2025, President Trump, citing this EO, invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport alleged TdA members to a Salvadoran prison, bypassing normal immigration court process. This has been the subject of multiple lawsuits. 

Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety (1/20/25) Requires the Attorney General to pursue the death penalty for every federal capital crime involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer or a “capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.” 

Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens (4/28/25) Empowers “State and local law enforcement to firmly police dangerous criminal behavior and protect innocent citizens.” The order directs the Attorney General to provide “legal resources and indemnification to law enforcement officers who unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.”  

The order also directs federal agencies to take steps to “maximize the use of Federal resources” for training, pay and benefits, and legal protections for state and local law enforcement, and to modify, rescind or conclude federal consent decrees and agreements to which a state or local law enforcement agency is a party.  

Department of Defense Security for the Protection of Department of Homeland Security Functions (6/7/25) Activates Federal service members and units of the National Guard to temporarily protect ICE and other federal government personnel who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur. Also directs the Defense Department to “coordinate with the Governors of the States and the National Guard Bureau in identifying and ordering into Federal service the appropriate members and units of the National Guard under this authority.” 

NOTE: This EO has been the subject of multiple lawsuits, with the cases currently working through the Ninth Circuit. 

Taking Steps to End Cashless Bail to Protect Americans (8/25/25) Directs the Attorney General to prepare a list of states and local jurisdictions that have eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual, or indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism. EO also directs agencies to identify Federal funds, including grants and contracts, currently provided to cashless bail jurisdictions that may be suspended or terminated.

Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency (1/24/25). Establishes a “Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council’ to make recommendations about “improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest and enable national resilience.”  

NOTE: The Review Council issued a final report with recommendations for action in May 2026. 

Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness (3/19/25) Establishes as U.S. policy “that State and local governments and individuals play a more active and significant role in national resilience and preparedness” and requires agencies to update their regulations and procedures to facilitate a stronger role for state and local governments in disaster preparedness and response. 

Each year, members of Congress direct federal monies to specific projects in their communities, from transportation enhancements to public safety initiatives. Learn how urban place management organizations (UPMO) can apply for and secure federal funding for projects that make your downtowns vibrant places to live, play and work. IDA’s guide to congressionally directed spending provides step-by-step instructions, including key deadlines and tips on how to make the best case for funding. Download the handbook here.