The National Coalition for Housing Justice is deeply concerned by recent federal efforts that use guardianship as a response to veteran homelessness and related health needs. In the wealthiest nation in the world, we can build systems that ensure everyone – including veterans – can get the care and housing they need. But guardianship, a legal process where a court appoints a person or entity to make decisions for someone else, is an extreme legal measure that strips individuals of their rights to make choices about their health and lives.
Expanding guardianship reflects a fundamental misalignment with American values of freedom, dignity, due process, and self-determination that must guide public policy and that veterans themselves fought to uphold. Veterans and all people experiencing homelessness deserve better.
The expansion of this policy reflects a pattern in which the Trump administration has enacted policies and pushed for laws that target marginalized communities. The administration has persecuted immigrants with extreme enforcement, LGBTQ individuals – particularly transgendered people – with discriminatory policies, and now veterans who need strong support to rebuild their lives.
It is a proven fact that we can solve veteran homelessness. Veteran homelessness has dropped by more than half in the last 15 years thanks to the concerted work to provide veterans permanent housing and the support services they need to rebuild their lives. This was achieved without guardianship.
Housing plus supportive services are the solution for veterans experiencing homelessness, who are often coping with trauma, disability, racial discrimination, and inability to access needed care. Expanding involuntary control over veterans’ lives does not address root causes of homelessness, such as the shortage of affordable housing and underfunded voluntary services. Instead, these approaches risk eroding trust between veterans and the institutions meant to serve them—particularly among veterans of color, who are disproportionately impacted by homelessness and coercive interventions.
Guardianship exists in part because of real and devastating failures of care for people who need more support to take care of themselves including situations of severe neglect where people are left without basic support, dignity, or safety. But those failures reflect the absence of adequately funded housing and services, not a justification for expanding legal control over people experiencing homelessness.
The Coalition calls for policymakers to reject this over-reliance on guardianship and focus on real solutions to homelessness: creating and investing in more safe, stable, affordable homes and improving care. Policymakers should build on the success of reducing veteran homelessness by making rental assistance available to everyone who needs it, including veterans. Federal policymakers should fully fund the care veterans and others need to get care in the community, including services through the VA. They should also reverse Medicaid funding cuts that will make it harder for people to get care they need. Policies that prioritize control over care are an attempt to make homelessness invisible instead of solving it. That is inconsistent with the freedoms veterans served to protect and with core commitments to liberty, dignity, and due process. Our vision for housing includes giving everyone those freedoms and rights.