Where Biden, Trump and Kennedy stand on housing and homelessness

Trump has said little about how he’d address housing or homelessness since announcing his reelection bid last year. His campaign website lists ending veteran homelessness as a priority, though it offers no specifics.

“Joe Biden puts illegal aliens before homeless veterans and we cannot let this happen any longer,” the former president said in a video. “The American veteran is one of our greats. These are great, great people. We have to take care of them.”

Last April, Trump released a video saying that American cities had been sullied by “the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged” — adding later that he would “ban urban camping.” He also said that violators would be arrested but be “given the option to accept treatment.”

These sorts of laws have traditionally been the domain of local government. In recent years, though, federal lawsuits have given judges an opening to weigh in on the laws related to punishing people for sleeping in public spaces.

During Trump’s presidency, homelessness nationwide went up, and he has offered few specifics about how he’d bring down home prices. He’s mused about getting rid of the Fair Housing Act, which protects minorities from discrimination in the purchase or renting of housing. His campaign characterizes these regulations as waging a “full-scale war on the suburbs.”

During his tenure, talking about homelessness became a shorthand for bashing Democrat-run states and cities. His proposed budgets often included drastic cuts to departments that traditionally deal with this issue, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Like Biden, Trump’s advisors have focused in on eliminating layers of regulation to make it easier and cheaper to build more housing. That federal push had few concrete results.