It had started to sprinkle, but Richard Vargas wanted to squeeze in some Narcan training for one more passerby Friday afternoon in East Garfield Park.
Within seconds, a young bicyclist stopped for a free pack of the overdose-reversing nasal spray and lowered his headphones to hear Vargas, the community outreach director of the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force.
“He said he’s lost several family members to drug overdose,” Vargas said later. “We gave him training on how to recognize when a person is having an overdose.”
Vargas also provided the bicyclist free kits to test illicit drug supplies for the synthetic opioids fentanyl and nitazine and for the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine. Such outreach is considered a “harm reduction” approach to illicit drug use — an approach that aims to minimize negative health, social and legal effects even if users are not ready to get clean.
But an executive order by President Donald Trump, issued Thursday and billed as “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets,” would shift funds away from the harm-reduction approach and direct federal support to states and cities to remove outdoor homeless encampments and forcefully institutionalize people.
Vargas and other Chicago advocates and care providers say the order targets homelessness visibility, not solutions.
“If there is no funding for this work, how will we be able to do it?” Vargas asked.
Redirecting funding
Trump’s order claims that “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.”
The remedy, according to the order, is an overhaul of the country’s response to homelessness. Funds would shift away from “housing first” programs that provide homes without requiring sobriety or treatment.
The order also claims that harm reduction efforts “only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.”
The order doesn’t mention Narcan or distribution of clean needles, pipes or snorting gear aimed at slowing the spread of contagions such as HIV and hepatitis.
But it calls for the U.S. attorney general to review some federal grant recipients — those “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” — and determine whether they are violating federal law.
Advocates for unhoused people say stigmatizing drug and alcohol use can lead to further harm.
“You think they’re doing drugs because it’s just a fun thing [but] they’re not,” said Jackie Edens, CEO of Inner Voice, a Chicago organization that addresses homelessness. “They’re self-medicating. They’re trying to get through the night.”
Nationally, as harm-reduction efforts have gained steam, overdose deaths have generally tailed off from an August 2023 peak. In Illinois, 3,502 people died from an overdose in 2023, according to state data. That was 317 fewer than in 2022.
But homelessness has become more visible across the country. The unhoused population grew by more than 18% last year, according to federal officials.
In Chicago, this population was officially 6,786 this past January — the second-highest tally over the last decade and nearly double the city’s 2022 count.
Departing from the “housing first” approach would be a grave mistake, advocates say.
Mental health and addiction issues can worsen without access to housing, said Mark Ishaug, president and CEO of Thresholds, a Chicago service provider. Ishaug, who has studied homelessness approaches for 35 years, called Trump’s order a “travesty.”
Ishaug said stable housing is necessary to “ensure access to health care and then quality health outcomes and give people hope they need to work — to go back to school, to get reunited with family and friends and to live full, productive lives in the community.”
Institutionalizing and criminalizing houseless people is “the last thing we need,” Ishaug said. “It doesn’t work, it’s expensive and, at the bottom line, it’s inhumane.”
Advocates say the money for institutionalization would be spent better on affordable housing and health care.
Edens questioned how the executive order could be enforced and said she is worried about mass arrests of homeless people.
And the order doesn’t address homelessness causes such as rising rents, stagnant wages or a lack of affordable housing, Ishaug said.
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accused the city of wrongly limiting affordable housing by allowing City Council members to reject affordable units in their wards through the use of aldermanic prerogative. The federal investigation fizzled after Trump took office.
Housing groups have said they will try to work with the city directly on the issue.
Apart from Trump’s order, advocates are worried about his 2026 budget proposal, which would slash rental assistance, they say.
“A growing sentiment is that this is the way to deal with homelessness — to punish people and hide them, rather than really focus on solutions,” said Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness.
A downstate ‘human rights crisis’
In downstate Illinois, Trump’s order could cause even more damage, according to Christine Kahl, CEO of Phoenix Community Development Services, which serves unhoused populations in the central Illinois counties of Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford and Fulton.
“What might have been a homeless crisis just became a human rights crisis,” said Kahl, a 40-year veteran in social services.
She said the order led groups like hers to wonder whether their federal grants would disappear as the feds pull the rug from under more permanent “housing first” initiatives, in favor of “transitional” housing — an approach largely abandoned years ago amid findings that it did not work, much like forced institutionalization.
If the money is pulled, Kahl said it would be disastrous for downstate programs that were already underfunded.
This year the unhoused population count in Phoenix’s four-county area is its highest ever, Kahl said. The area’s housing waiting list already includes 400 people.
“We were already struggling keeping up, so to now see some of the parts of this order completely pull all of the safety nets, I feel our recovery from this will be almost insurmountable,” Kahl said. “The funds already weren’t keeping up with the need. … It erodes all the progress we’ve made over decades.”
Trump’s order builds on a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that allowed cities to punish people for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go. That ruling sparked legislation banning “outdoor camping” on public property in more than 100 municipalities across the country, including several in Illinois.
A Peoria ordinance last year set up steep fines and possible incarceration for people who repeatedly “camp and store personal property in public spaces.”
Under Trump’s order, cities with such bans could now be prioritized for federal funding.
An Illinois House bill would prevent cities from enacting these laws. The legislation, introduced in January, has stalled in committee.
Kahl said she worries that Trump’s order could weaken public support for funding social services.
“We had communities here adopt that [Peoria] ordinance that never had a homeless person in the 21 years I’ve been at this agency,” Kahl said. Some landlords and donors also quit working with her group.
“People who were tolerant before might not feel like they have to be anymore,” she said.
Stability and access to care
Chicago hasn’t outlawed sleeping outside but how to address homelessness remains a hot topic.
Last year, a majority of Chicago voters rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Bring Chicago Home referendum, which would have raised the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties to bring in money to tackle homelessness.
A statement from the city’s Public Health Department said officials are monitoring the impact of Trump’s order and have concerns about effects on “access to critical health services” for homeless and addicted people.
“Public health solutions must be rooted in evidence, compassion and equity,” the statement said. “We remain committed to approaches that prioritize housing stability, harm reduction and access to care — strategies that save lives and strengthen communities.”
Ald. Bill Conway (34th Ward), who described a homeless encampment in his ward as a magnet for drugs and violence two years ago, said rapid rehousing services and other resources are vital to addressing homelessness.
“We have to connect people with housing, and Trump’s executive order does the opposite,” Conway wrote in a statement.
On the Northwest Side, a homeless encampment at Gompers Park that had grown fast last year caught the attention of neighbors who said the encampment made it unsafe to bring their kids to the park. Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) pushed City Hall for an “accelerated moving process” to get people into shelters and apartments.
Back in East Garfield Park on Friday, the bicyclist rode off with his Narcan but quickly circled back to ask Vargas, the opioid outreach leader, about treatment possibilities for heroin users.
“We’re going to make a referral for him Monday to go to a detox program,” Vargas said. “So the Narcan is the draw [that leads to] connections that we try to make for individuals.”
The ultimate goals may be health and sobriety, but Vargas said his team lets people decide for themselves what they need and what they’re ready for.
“Whatever that is, we try to provide it,” he said.
Vargas pointed to the recent decline in fatal overdoses.
“My fear is that, if there are not people out providing prevention, that we can see an uptick in those numbers.”
Chip Mitchell reports for WBEZ Chicago on policing, public safety and public health. Follow him at Bluesky and X. Reach him at cmitchell@wbez.org. Violet Miller and Mary Norkol are reporters with the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow Violet on Bluesky and Instagram and reach her at vmiller@suntimes.com. Follow Mary on X and contact her at mnorkol@suntimes.com.