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 (SNH CoC). 

“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.” 

“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.”