President Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants homeless people off the streets of Washington, DC — along with the rest of the nation’s cities.

Alongside encampment sweeps, a key component of Trump’s homelessness policy is involuntary commitments, also known as civil commitments. The idea is to force an unhoused person into a facility to undergo mandatory drug or mental health treatments. That might sound extreme, but it’s a practice that has been around for decades — and it’s now gaining popularity across the country.

“We were committing people before we had medications, before we had electroconvulsive therapy,” says Alex Barnard, assistant professor of sociology at New York University and author of the 2023 book Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care fo

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