(WASHINGTON, D.C – December 21st, 2025)

The annual Homeless Persons' Memorial Day is this weekend. This year, like every year, people will gather across the country to mourn those who died without a safe place to call home. In a country as wealthy and as powerful as ours, it is shameful that anybody lives or dies without the dignity of a home. Every death of a homeless person is a preventable policy failure. We can and must do better.  

This year's memorial days feel especially charged. The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to ticket, arrest, and round up homeless people. We've already seen massive cuts to vital healthcare programs, decreases in food assistance, and draconian proposals to slash funding for housing. Utah's Governor found $45 million to build a massive, remote, homeless detention camp. Let us be clear: these policy choices will make more people homeless, hungry, and sick. And they mean that even more people will die.  

As we have said before, these attacks on homeless people are not new. But now, they are also coming from the highest levels of government. Donald Trump has used his power not to help lower the cost of rent or increase access to healthcare. Rather, he has used his power to attack, bully, and scapegoat people who have no choice but to live outside.  

Over the past year, there has been a marked increase in words, policies, and actions that attack – and even kill – our homeless neighbors.  

Words, such as when a Fox News host called for the killing of homeless people on live TV. Words from politicians who demonize homeless people instead of doing their jobs and ensuring that everybody has a safe place to live. And words from community members who blame homelessness on people who can't afford the rent, instead of our broken housing system.   

Policies, like Utah's proposal to build a massive, remote, government-run detention camp that will hold people against their will. Policies like the increase in laws that make it a crime to sleep outside, including those pushed for by Palantir co-founder and right-wing billionaire Joe Lonsdale, through his Cicero Institute. And policies like the Trump administration's continued claim that it will adopt policies that will force hundreds of thousands of people back into homelessness. 

Actions, like the continued clearing of homeless communities, including evictions in Atlanta that killed Cornelius Taylor, and in Pensacola, Florida, after which August Bucki froze to death after the city destroyed his shelter. Actions like the killing of Corey Zukatis, a homeless man who was found dead, hanging from a tree in Vicksburg, Mississippi. And actions that have led to the suffering and deaths of countless homeless people that we don't yet know about.  

May these senseless, tragic, and preventable deaths fuel our fight for housing justice.  

Even in sorrow, we continue to fight.  

Homeless Persons Memorial Day is held on the darkest day of the year. Yet amongst this darkness and sorrow, we must continue to fight for a country where everybody has the housing and support they need. Below are two ways you can fight with us.  

1. Demand that Congress pass the Housing Not Handcuffs Act  
2. Attend our mass meeting on January 14th to learn more about the work being done to stop Utah's creation of a government-run homeless detention camp. Stay tuned for details!  

In solidarity, 

The National Homelessness Law Center