At Daybreak, we serve more than 500 youth and young adults annually through emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, street outreach, employment readiness, education support, and mental health services. We see every day how Housing First changes and saves lives. When we place a young person in housing without strings attached, they can begin to heal, pursue education, find employment, and rebuild their futures. This approach has been the national standard for over a decade because it works.
These new federal directives don’t just threaten national progress they directly jeopardize local housing efforts in Dayton and Montgomery County. We are already bracing for potential funding cuts as federal, state, and local grant priorities shift away from Housing First. Grant guidelines are being rewritten to eliminate harm reduction strategies, require compliance-based housing, and prioritize communities that artificially reduce unsheltered counts. For Daybreak, this means we may be forced to cut or drastically alter programming that has successfully ended homelessness for countless young people.
Criminalizing homelessness, as this order encourages, will have the opposite effect of what is promised. Arresting or institutionalizing people for being homeless creates criminal records that will follow them for life, locking them out of housing opportunities and trapping them in cycles of poverty and instability. These actions will push more people onto the streets, not fewer, and will undo years of progress in shifting our communities toward compassion, dignity, and the understanding that shelter is a basic human right.
As Bailey Thompson, Daybreak’s Housing Director, says:
“Housing First ensures that those who are most vulnerable get the help they need when they need it Housing is a human right, not a privilege to be earned through meeting unnecessary hurdles. Adding requirements for entry like having a job or passing a drug test will lock out the very people these programs are meant to serve. We have spent years tearing down the barriers that keep youth and young adults from accessing safe housing. This Executive Order rebuilds those barriers higher than ever before. It will not end homelessness; it will punish it. And punishment has never been the path to stability.”
Daybreak needs the community’s support now more than ever. With funding uncertainties at every level of government, we must protect the programs that work and the young people who depend on them. Ending homelessness starts with housing, not handcuffs. Our future depends on the compassion and commitment of our neighbors to ensure every young person has a safe place to call home.
Tyra Jackson is the Chief Operating Officer for Daybreak in Dayton.