Photo: 2025-2026 DC Service Corps Members protest the federal takeover.
A federal takeover of Washington, D.C. has escalated the crisis for the city’s unhoused population. With the National Guard deployed and federal police agencies patrolling the streets, advocates are witnessing a terrifying new chapter in the criminalization of homelessness.
To understand what’s happening on the ground, I spoke with two Avodahniks who are on the front lines of this fight.
Jesse Rabinowitz, a former Avodah staff member and current D.C. Advisory Council member, is the Campaign and Communications Director at the National Homelessness Law Center. Lara Pukatch, a 2004-2005 alum of the Jewish Service Corps, is the Chief Advocacy Officer at Miriam’s Kitchen.
We’re seeing news about the federal government sending the National Guard into D.C. and clearing unhoused encampments. Can you tell us what this looks like on the ground? What’s new or different about this situation?
JESSE People sleep outside in D.C. for the same reason they do across the country: rent is too expensive. The average rent for a one-bedroom here is $2,300. Laws that criminalize being homeless and Black in public are as old as this country, but we have seen an increase in laws that make it a crime to be poor, sick, and disabled, especially over the past five years. We can trace this to the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank that is now closely advising the Trump administration.
So, D.C. has been clearing encampments for the past decade; the idea that it’s a permissive place to be homeless is just not true. But what we’ve seen over the past month has been a huge escalation. The D.C. National Guard has been deployed at a cost to D.C. taxpayers of about a million dollars a day. For one week of that deployment, we could solve homelessness for 150 people for a year. There are also Guard units from six other states occupying D.C., and they are carrying their weapons.
What’s not being told as much is the increase in federal policing agencies. There are roaming bands of FBI and Secret Service agents—any three-letter agency you can think of—primarily at night. Several weeks ago, we saw them purposefully terrorizing folks living outside. The next day, a caravan of 20 or 30 police cruisers and trash trucks sped through the city, quickly throwing away people’s possessions. This is all part of Donald Trump’s push to make it a crime to sleep outside. He has proposed no funding for housing; in fact, his budget cut funding for healthcare. The solution to homelessness is housing, but Donald Trump isn’t interested in helping people. He’s interested in power.
How are people experiencing homelessness reacting to this?
LARA The main thing is that there’s a lot of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. That has drastically escalated since a series of executive orders began in March about making D.C. “safe and beautiful” and addressing a “crime emergency”. All of them mentioned cleaning up our streets and reducing homeless encampments. With each rumor and each order, there is uncertainty about how and when it will be implemented, which has been pervasive for months.
This adds more trauma on top of what people are already going through. It also makes homelessness worse and makes the work of ending it harder. When people are displaced or hiding because they know police or the National Guard are out to get them, they aren’t able to connect to life-saving and housing services. Getting supplies like water, blankets, or food becomes harder. The path on a housing journey, which is already very complicated, becomes more difficult. We are seeing fear, anxiety, and exacerbated trauma, all in the name of something that we know doesn’t solve homelessness but actually makes it worse.
Amid all this, are the voices of people who are unhoused being included in the conversation about what should happen?
LARA The voices of folks experiencing homelessness are heard in small and big ways. Organizations doing street outreach and mutual aid are asking people what they need and sharing information about what’s happening. Part of our work at Miriam’s Kitchen is making sure that people with current and past lived experience of homelessness don’t just inform our work, but have a seat at the table in decisions that impact their lives.
I think D.C. has been pretty good about this, though there’s always room for improvement. The advice for any organization is to prioritize hearing from and empowering people with lived experience to help lead your work way before you find yourself in a new emergency. You need to develop that trust and infrastructure beforehand. We also have a lot of peer-led outreach and advocacy in D.C., with organizations and outreach workers who have lived experience themselves leading this work.
You both used words from the dominant narrative, like “safety” and “crime”. What does safety really mean in this context?
JESSE D.C. is at a 30-year low point in crime; the District is safer than it’s been in 30 years. The solution to crime is not more police, it’s more resources like housing and support. D.C. actually has the most police per capita in the world; even our library system has its own police force. Donald Trump is not providing resources; he’s proposing to cut them. He’s not interested in safety; he’s interested in power and control.
He is trafficking in racist tropes about people in poverty. In D.C., 85-90% of the homeless population is Black. It’s not a coincidence that he is targeting a city with a high Black concentration and a Black mayor. The other cities he’s named—Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland, and New York—also have Black mayors and large Black populations. This is a play from the authoritarian playbook. First, you take over the national capital with the military. Then, you traffic in racist myths to dehumanize people and set the stage to force them into government-run detention centers. Donald Trump has openly bragged about his desire to put homeless folks into detention camps. He is using D.C. as a testing ground.
LARA For many of us, safety looks like a roof over your head and a door that locks. We know that people experiencing homelessness are more often victims of crime than perpetrators. It is unsafe to be outside without shelter from heat emergencies or inclement weather, and it’s certainly not safe when you are just trying to survive in a city that has increased police and military presence specifically targeting people experiencing homelessness. What we know provides safety for entire communities is when everyone has access to safe and affordable housing.
How have these federal actions shifted the work your organizations do?
LARA It absolutely shifts our work. On a programmatic level, our outreach case managers are not able to focus on connecting people to housing. Almost all of their time is spent telling people about what is happening and what their options are, when an encampment is being swept, where police checkpoints are, and making sure undocumented neighbors know what to do if ICE comes. We are being forced to react to crisis upon crisis instead of doing the work that actually ends homelessness.
At the same time, we’re hearing rhetoric from this administration about moving away from the “Housing First” model, which is backed by decades of research. The solutions we have worked so hard to get are now at risk. This is changing the entire way we think about our homeless services system—and the advocacy and organizing work is just as important as ever, if not more so. States can and should still be implementing what they know works, and they should be doing it urgently before this manufactured emergency comes to their jurisdictions.
JESSE For us, our work feels more urgent, but it remains the same. We’ve been fighting laws that criminalize homelessness for years. For a long time, people thought we were crying wolf, and they continue to be surprised that Donald Trump is doing what he says he’s going to do. When a fascist tells you what they want to do, you should believe them. Project 2025 outlined his plans. We have to jump over the surprise and get to work.
And we are seeing tremendous success at the state level. In the past legislative cycle, advocates beat back 80% of the state-level bills introduced to criminalize homelessness. People know that destroying someone’s tent doesn’t help them get an apartment.
Can you describe what these encampment clearings and checkpoints actually look like?
JESSE I don’t think people across the country are grasping how bad things are in D.C.. My kids’ daycare won’t take the children out for walks anymore because they’re scared of ICE. There are checkpoints every night where they’re randomly stopping people. There are National Guard soldiers walking around with rifles at the grocery store. Trump is using D.C. as a testing ground for what a federal takeover looks like, and honestly, the national reaction is pretty muted.
I’ve witnessed more encampment evictions than I’d like, but what we saw here was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was a motorcade of police cars and trash trucks speeding from one encampment to the next, just throwing away people’s stuff. People’s bikes that they need for work get thrown away. Their IDs needed for housing get thrown away. The ashes of a deceased relative are thrown away. These things are traumatic and make homelessness worse. Now it’s getting colder at night, and people are still sleeping outside, but without protection from the elements.
LARA I also want to underscore that this is not just impacting our unhoused community. This is a military occupation of our city that is impacting every single one of our residents. Everyone feels fear and anxiety. You see checkpoints everywhere. People are being pulled over for no reason and arrested for things they shouldn’t be.
How do your Jewish values help sustain you in this work?
LARAThe same things that brought me to Avodah years ago still stick with me: a deep commitment to justice and making sure it exists for all people. Also, the important Jewish value of helping the stranger, of remembering when we were strangers in another’s land. I am rooted in the reality that Jews, too, have been where we are seeing our neighbors now. Even if we haven’t personally experienced homelessness or targeting by ICE, our ancestors experienced state violence not too long ago in history. We cannot forget that, and we must let our values move us to act.
JESSE I was talking to a friend, Rabbi Avigayil Halperin, and she reflected that if you saw a Torah scroll on the ground outside, you would be mortified. It would be a huge deal. But we walk past people sleeping outside every day, and we’re not reacting. I don’t know why that is, but it has to change.
The cruelty with which homeless folks are being treated is a violation of the values we’re taught. I learned you’re supposed to treat everyone like they have G-d’s name on their forehead. If someone has G-d’s name on their forehead, you’re not throwing away their stuff or putting them in jail for sleeping outside. This is the time for real moral leadership to step up and say that what’s happening is just wrong. We have the money to solve homelessness. We can do this. But we need our political leaders to do their jobs and focus on making people’s lives easier, not kicking folks when they’re down.
This is a national issue. What do you want people across the country to do right now?
JESSE Four things. First, give money. Donate to organizations like Miriam’s Kitchen, Pathways to Housing, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, or mutual aid organizations in D.C.
Second, D.C. doesn’t have voting representation in Congress, so we need people to contact their lawmakers on our behalf and tell them to end the federal takeover of D.C.
Third, support the Housing Not Handcuffs Act, which was introduced by Representatives Frost and Jayapal. It would prevent the federal government from using its forces to punish people sleeping outside.
Fourth, D.C. residents have been at the forefront of this resistance for a long time, and we’re tired. We need folks from across the country to come and stand with us at community events and protests.
LARA I would echo giving money to organizations doing homeless street outreach, advocacy groups, and mutual aid groups. So much of what’s happened in the past few weeks has been the prevention of something worse, and mutual aid groups and homeless service providers played a huge role in that. Also, D.C. needs attorneys. People are being arrested in really big numbers. If you’re an attorney with time to give, think about what pro bono services you can offer. And finally, get trained to be a legal observer and get familiar with your rights when you witness something happening.
Lara Pukatch is the Chief Advocacy Officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, an organization dedicated to ending long-term homelessness in Washington, DC, through meals, street outreach, Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), and advocacy. She has over 20 years of experience as a policy, advocacy, and communications professional with expertise in empowering vulnerable populations, leading coalitions, and facilitating large-scale institutional change. Lara chairs The Way Home Campaign, an advocacy movement to end chronic homelessness. She also oversees Miriam’s Kitchen’s work to ensure that individuals with lived experience of homelessness are true drivers of the change they wish to see at Miriam’s Kitchen and beyond. Known for leading with humility and often behind the scenes, Lara has a reputation as a leader that builds transformational relationships, thinks strategically, and consistently applies a racial and gender equity lens to her work.
Before joining Miriam’s Kitchen, Lara held a variety of positions in international and national women’s rights organizations. She holds a master’s degree in Gender and International Development from George Washington University and B.A.s in Sociology and Spanish from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated with honors.
Jesse Rabinowitz is the Campaign and Communications Director at the National Homelessness Law Center. He led the communications and power-building work on the historic Johnson vs. Grants Pass Supreme Court Case. Jesse also leads the Housing, Not Handcuffs Campaign, which brings together local, state, and federal partners to fight against laws that make it a crime to live outside and push for housing and other proven solutions to homelessness. Jesse’s work is frequently featured in various media outlets, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
Previously, he was the Senior Manager for Policy and Advocacy at Miriam’s Kitchen, a DC-based nonprofit working to end long-term homelessness. At Miriam’s Kitchen, Jesse managed a collation that won funding to end chronic homelessness for over 6,000 people.
Jesse received his master’s in social work at Howard University and lives in DC with his spouse and kiddo.
