'Be practical.' Obama says Democrats need to change approach on homelessness
- 23 hours ago
- 3 min read
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Former President Barack Obama spoke about homelessness in a new interview, urging his fellow Democrats to change their approach on the issue and saying many Americans don't want to "navigate around a tent city" in major urban areas.
"Morally, ethically speaking, it is an atrocity that in a country that’s wealthy, we have people just on the streets, and we should insist on policies that recognize their full humanity," Obama said, speaking to progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview released Feb. 14.
Obama had been speaking about immigration enforcement before making the comments on homelessness, arguing that progressive and moderate Democrats debate the two crises similarly online.
"Sometimes, I think what happens in the online debate is, if somebody suggests, well, we have to have some immigration enforcement, then somebody is going to point at that child and say, 'So you don’t care about that kid, so you must be a bad person.' The same would be true, let’s say here in Los Angeles, around the homeless issue," he said.
Obama said Democrats need to acknowledge that "the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city," and the party won't have enough support to tackle the problem if it can't build a working majority.
"That doesn’t mean that we care less about those folks," the former president said, referring to people experiencing homelessness. "It means that if we really care about them, then we’ve got to try to figure out, how do we gain majority support and be practical in terms of what we can get through at this moment in time, and build on those victories."
Homelessness in many parts of the United States has been on the rise. In 2024, the most recent year of data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, more people were experiencing homelessness compared with any year since data collection began in 2007. The department's point-in-time survey found an 18% jump in homelessness from 2023 to 2024, with a total of 771,480 people experiencing homelessness.
The issue has been a lightning rod issue not only between moderate and progressive Democrats, but among Republicans as well. President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to crack down on people experiencing homeless in the nation's capital and across the country.
In July 2025, he signed an order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to reverse the legal precedents that restrict authorities' ability to move homeless people from streets and encampments into treatment centers. Critics immediately raised concerns that the efforts would only worsen the problem.
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Trump's move came after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that people without homes can be arrested and fined for sleeping in public spaces, overturning a lower court’s ruling that enforcing camping bans when shelter is lacking is cruel and unusual punishment.
A month later, Trump rejected the longstanding "housing first" approach to tackling homelessness during the federal takeover of Washington law enforcement, resulting in a widespread sweep of homeless encampments.
"I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before," Trump shared in a post on Truth Social. "The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital."
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