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An executive order signed by President Donald Trump is aiming to combat crime involving homelessness throughout the country, with cities such as Las Vegas seeing a crisis surrounding encampments overtaking communities and crippling the local area.
Sin City has seen an uptick in homelessness throughout the community, with a 20% increase within Clark County in 2024, according to the most recent data from the Southern Nevada Homeless Continuum of Care.
“It’s progressively gotten worse and worse and worse,” Robert Marbut, the former federal homelessness czar under Trump’s first administration, told Fox News Digital. “And there was sort of an idea that they tried a lot of gimmicks in the beginning.”
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The increase comes as Clark County officials are looking to combat homelessness, but have reportedly hit roadblocks while acknowledging the city possesses the funding, yet lacks a concrete plan.
“I mean, we have the resources but we do not have a specific plan,” Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom said, according to News 3 Las Vegas.
“We have lots of resources. But we are not proactive, we really respond. So, unless somebody calls and tells us what is going on, a lot of times we have so much going on in the county that we do not have the ability to be there.”
Segerblom did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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The concept of a city having resources, but no concrete way of executing an effective plan, is not new, according to Marbut.
“I only lost one project [in two decades] because of money,” Marbut told Fox News Digital. “Every other city that decides not to do something, it’s the lack of political will of the leadership.”
Marbut pointed to two key groups within the city’s homeless population serving as the cause of concern for local officials: individuals who remain unhoused on the streets, and those who are often in and out of hospitals.
“They’ll move from the street to jail, to the emergency room, back to the street, under a river, into a rescue mission, back to the street, back to jail,” Marbut said. “And that group has a lot of people trying to say, ‘We just need more housing, we need affordable housing.’ This is a group [that], even with affordable housing, can’t keep their house.”
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The issue of maintaining a rental is reflected in the numbers, with Clark County accounting for over 26,000 evictions since the start of this year, according to data from Eviction Lab. The county currently has about 371,000 rental households, the organization reported.
Marbut looked to his own experience addressing homelessness throughout the area within the last four years.
“They were saying, ‘We just want to keep building more affordable housing and we want to keep giving away free housing to people who are experiencing homelessness,’” Marbut said. “But it didn’t work.”
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According to Marbut, street-level homelessness within Las Vegas continues to rise on an annual basis, with local leaders putting the bulk of their efforts into combating the crisis within the city’s highly-trafficked tourism areas.
“They are putting money into the street-level because of their self-interest,” Marbut said. “That’s what’s motivating them, and if that’s what it takes to get funding – to fund a good model – OK, go for it.”
The city reportedly pivoted to offering vouchers for free food and housing in past attempts to fight homelessness – an attempt that Marbut believes proved futile.
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“Clark County and Las Vegas kept doubling down on a program that wouldn’t work,” Marbut said. “They kept doubling down, they kept putting more money in. They kept, from my understanding, counting on the federal government money and some of their local money – there was somewhere between two and a half to four times more funding, depending on how you measure it, and it didn’t make a dent. In fact, homelessness went up. And sometimes when you have a bad program and you fund it with more money, it actually makes things worse.”
The issue has been exasperated in recent weeks, with a local neighborhood on edge after a previously removed homeless encampment located in an empty parking lot across the street reportedly returned within days.
“Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas,” a neighbor living at Casa Bonita Apartments said, according to KLAS. “We are filled with trash, garbage and homeless people sleeping in the streets. We’re so fabulous. Honestly, it wouldn’t hurt the state to fix this problem.”
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The apartment complex’s tenants are reportedly fed up with the encampment, pointing to instances of fires being lit, trash being left out and even confrontations between homeless individuals and residents.
“There was a dumpster fire at 3 a.m,” Briana Talbot, property manager for Casa Bonita Apartments, told the outlet. “Someone was walking through the parking lot, lit something on fire in the trash and the whole dumpster caught on fire.”
Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley and Talbot did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
In light of the crisis sweeping the nation, Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” in an effort to cut down on instances of violence involving homeless individuals.
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“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,” the order states.
The order authorizes the federal government to work with local and state offices throughout the country to implement treatment for homeless individuals, while targeting specific issues – such as squatting and illegal drug use – within communities.
Trump’s administration is also looking to ensure federal funding does not enable “safe consumption” policies, which allow homeless individuals to consume illegal drugs while supervised.
The move is celebrated by Marbut, who believes it is a step in the right direction toward a federal policy on combating and treating homelessness.
“What the president’s order – and I applaud him for doing this – is saying, we’re going to take a zero-tolerance approach to encampments,” Marbut said.
“So what the executive order is trying to do is stop these encampments under bridges, rivers, out in the open, downtown, back alleys, and get people in the real world. Real programs that really work and not doing gimmicks.”
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