Updated 9/19/2025 

Please note: While accessible to the public via the URL, this page is not listed on our website out of an abundance of caution to protect partners and co-conspirators in the work. Please share with discernment with your trusted partners. Funders Together for Housing Justice will update this webpage as developments occur.

Following its July 24 executive order that expands punitive responses to homelessness, the Trump Administration has federalized the D.C. police force and deployed the national guard in alignment with an authoritarian takeover. While the District is legally distinct in its relationship to Federal governance, the Administration has signaled it is considering deploying similar takeovers to additional cities, specifically Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, and Oakland.  

Funders Together for Housing Justice has partnered with the National Homelessness Law Center and the National Alliance to End Homelessness to create guidance for advocates and philanthropy based on the experience of D.C. homelessness advocates resisting and responding to the takeover, including what they’re learning and what they wish had been in place beforehand. It will be updated in real time. Alongside the tactical guidance below, it is important to engage in planning with the following considerations: 

• It is no coincidence that the cities Trump has targeted have Black mayors. This is a clear anti-Black action. As a pro-Black institution, Funders Together urges antiracist responses in turn, recognizing that Black, brown, and Indigenous people bear the brunt of fascist action and are specifically targeted.  

• Start preparing now. All cities and communities are at risk of the militarization of their police force and deployment of the national guard to destroy encampments and disappear unhoused people and weaponizing newfound authority on civil rights to involuntary institutionalize community members.  

• The developments in D.C. constitute a distinct crisis and, simultaneously, are not new. Criminalization of people who are homeless is already happening in jurisdictions across the political spectrum, tracing its roots to and reinforcing settler colonialism. 

• Many communities are already suffering from the federalization of the police in partnership with the expansion of ICE to ambush, detain, and deport migrants, explicitly seeking out nonwhite people. Migrant and unhoused populations are distinct but overlap, and it is the same carceral force criminalizing both groups. Communities should coordinate or consolidate their advocacy and mobilization with immigrant rights advocates.  

• Many cities stood up cross-sector response teams to respond to COVID-19, with support and involvement from philanthropy. This moment requires similar structures. Likewise, a public health approach and narrative to crisis response is preferable framing to a militarized one – avoid “war rooms” and “command centers,” etc. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as Audre Lorde reminds us. 
  
  
• Assume the federal government will not authentically coordinate and communicate with your local government. In D.C., the federal government worked with local agencies, which allowed service providers and outreach workers to better coordinate and help reduce harm where possible due to having information from local partners. Based on this, it is likely federal agencies will reduce coordination with local governments where possible in order to stop service providers and advocates from planning in advance.

Below are specific areas of need as identified by providers, advocates, and unhoused people in D.C. based on their experience with the takeover: 

Organizing and Mobilizing 

• Convene community partners, advocates, cross-sector immigrant rights and/or healthcare organizations, and unhoused folks as soon as possible to start the planning process, build trust and relationships, and identify immediate and mid-term needs. 

• Identify and invest in community coordination roles early in the process to help manage relationships and act as a dedicated point of contact for each area of work, (i.e. faith communities contact, communication/media efforts contact, outreach contact, and legal partners contact). 

• Reach out to your local partners that own property, like religious organizations, to explore the use of their facilities for storage and/or emergency beds. 

• Identify and provide emergency funding to trusted mutual aid networks in your community and connect them to unhoused people.  

• Convene funders (if you don’t already have a housing/homelessness funder table) to understand what they are hearing from their grantee partners what the needs are and coordinate where funding needs to go now and what needs to be addressed in the mid- and long-term. Funders Together for Housing Justice can assist in helping to coordinate local philanthropy. Contact Michael Durham, Director of Networks for assistance. 

• Work within your foundation to synchronize portfolio areas, especially around immigrant rights and health, to identify actions to take that have intersecting impacts. 

 
Preparation Resourcing 

• Move flexible resources of any amount to local organizations as all amounts can be impactful and reduce or eliminate the need for burdensome application and reporting processes. Working with other funders to set up a rapid response pooled fund is an effective way to leverage resources and be efficient with deployment of those resources.
  
  
• Outreach to unhoused folks to assess barriers to meeting their immediate needs that can be addressed now (i.e., identification, storage, transportation, etc.). 

• Flexible transportation options including public transportation funds, ride shares, shelter vans, etc., to help relocate folks to areas where they will be safe whether with family or other places of support. 

• Mobile phones to unhoused people who do not have them and may be hard to reach post-raids so outreach workers can keep in contact with them and assist. 

• Storage for belongings and outreach efforts to communicate with people early on where they can go and offers of storage help. In D.C., some folks were turned away from shelters because there was no room or they had too many bags to bring inside. 

• Locations to set up emergency shelter beds to bring people inside away from potential harm, including hotel/motel rooms that were deployed as protective shelter during the pandemic.   

Legal 

• Fund and work with local legal organizations to support defense work and training for legal observers. 

• Create or contribute to an existing fund to pay fines or bail for unhoused folks who are impacted by law enforcement action or advocates who have been targeted for assisting unhoused people.  

• Connect with your local National Lawyers Guild chapter to plan ahead for what the needs might be and identify how you can support. It is likely they are unprepared for the influx of needs for defense lawyers.  

• Support collaborative, rapid-response legal aid, including medical-legal partnership to integrate lawyers in healthcare settings, as many unhoused people will be dumped in emergency departments. Seek technical assistance from (and financially support) groups like Legal Action Center and the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership. 

Communications 

• Work with your local advocates to identify a “speaker cabinet” of people who can respond to media inquiries. Fund media training to share messaging and narrative strategy. Connect the identified speakers to Jesse Rabinowitz at the National Homelessness Law Center for additional communication guidance based on the experience in D.C. 

• • Advice from advocates: The narrative around shelter beds is a hot topic for media. But be mindful about what information you are sharing and how (i.e. do not share addresses of protected places via social media, etc). Instead, tell the story about lack of shelter and the cost of the takeover.  
  • The Housing Narrative Lab has provided this guide on Connecting Housing and Homelessness to Federal Actions and Takeovers of American Cities that can be shared with your local partners. 
  • Frameworks Institute released its Framing Guide on the Deployment of Military and Federal Agents and the Seizure of Local Law Enforcement Power, which provides recommendations for communicating how these actions violate core democratic principles.

• Reach out to providers and advocates to fund printing and dissemination of Know Your Rights and informational materials.  

• Help identify and fund secure communications channels for providers, advocates, and other community partners.
  
  
• Use your organization's platform to uplift solutions – amplifying the organizations advancing them – and publicly call out the Administration's actions as an attempt to rig the system, take power away from the people, and disappear people experiencing homelessness. 

Security and Wellness 

• Resource data-scrubbing (ex. DeleteMe) for workers on the frontlines, especially for Black, Indigenous, Brown, LGBTQ+, and disabled advocates who are most likely to be targeted by threats or doxxing.  

• Streamline pathways for unhoused people to access identification in preparation for “check points”; those without identification may be detained or arrested.      

• Deploy dedicated resources for self-care for frontline and outreach workers doing this emotionally and physically taxing work. Consider a specific fund for Black, Indigenous, Brown, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and disabled leaders who are experiencing compounded trauma events and endure escalated fear of getting caught up in the sweeps and detentions. 
  
  

Lessons Learned from from COVID-19 Response

• In 2020, Funders Together for Housing Justice created recommendations for philanthropy to support COVID-19 response and systems change in the midst of a global health crisis. Though created in the context of a response to COVID-19, these recommendations can also be used to reimagine philanthropy’s response to protecting unhoused people at all times, especially during health or other crisis to move people into housing quickly, and to redesign systems to be equitable and just.   

Funders Together for Housing Justice will update the document as developments occur. If you have questions or additional recommendations, please contact Lauren Bennett, Chief of External Affairs.  

Funders Together provides support to foundations to stand up new funder collaboratives or peer networks on housing and homelessness, which can facilitate philanthropic rapid response. Learn more about existing Funders Together regional tables and contact Michael Durham, Director of Networks, with related questions.