ABSTRACT

Homelessness in the US is rising rapidly, and this rise is increasingly being borne by women. Federal policy has, at the same time, shifted towards criminalisation and institutionalisation. From the 2023 Point-In-Time (PIT) Count to 2024 there was an increase of 18 per cent in individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night. While men make up 60 per cent of those recorded in the 2024 PIT count, unsheltered homelessness among women has grown at a disproportionate rate of 25.1% from 2018-2022 compared to men’s 17.3%.[1] While in absolute terms men are the majority, in terms of growth rate, women are catching up. The risks faced by women experiencing homelessness (WEH) are numerous including ‘poor physical health, high rates of psychiatric disorders and excess mortality rates’, alongside the threat of sexual violence and exploitation.[2] Family and child homelessness also rose significantly between 2023 and 2024, with an increase of roughly 39% in people in families with children (HUD AHAR 2024). With the overrepresentation of women as heads of single parent families who are likelier to become homeless, the surge in family and child homelessness suggests the emergence of a gendered crisis.

On 24 July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order (EO) “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s streets”. The language of this EO is clear in its framing of street homelessness as “endemic vagrancy” and a public safety threat, as it instructs HUD and HHS both to end support for Housing First and to tie funding to mandatory treatment participation. Exacerbating an existing crisis, this EO constitutes a contravention of CEDAW’s requirement to address structural barriers facing all women and Article 2’s obligation to eliminate discrimination, which although not ratified in the US, still acts as the international standard. This failure disproportionately harms WEH, especially those who are survivors of domestic violence, single mothers and those who face intersecting forms of discrimination. This exposes the falsity of the claim that U.S. law exceeds the protections required by CEDAW.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH: CEDAW VIOLATIONS IN STATISTICS

Because HUD’s national counts are not consistently disaggregated by gender, the figures for family homelessness and the UTHealth study’s gender analysis will be read together as proxies. They almost certainly undercount ‘hidden’ forms of homelessness where women sofa surf rather than use shelters.

Scale of the Crisis (HUD AHAR 2024):

• 771,480 homeless people, 274,224 unsheltered. Using HUD’s total (771,480) and a US population of roughly 333 million, this PIT snapshot equates to about 232 people experiencing homelessness per 100,000 residents.

• Families with children experienced a 39% increase amounting to almost 150,000 homeless children. As most homeless families with children are headed by single mothers, the 39% increase in family homelessness strongly suggests a parallel rise in women’s homelessness.

Gendered trend (UTHealth/American Journal of Public Health Study):

• Unsheltered homelessness among women increased 25.1% between 2018-2022 compared to men at 17.3% over the same period.

• Female sheltered homelessness fell by 4.6% meaning more existing WEH are on the streets and being exposed to higher risk living conditions.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Qualitative evidence demonstrates how post July 2025 homelessness policy is producing gender specific harms in practice, particularly for women, children, pregnant individuals and survivors of domestic violence. Following the EO, several jurisdictions intensified enforcement led approaches to homelessness including policing, encampment removal and civil order strategies. The below document analysis and case studies demonstrate how this approach undermines women’s safety and autonomy, constituting active CEDAW violations under Articles 2, 3, 12, 14 and General recommendations 19 and 35.

Document Analysis

The EO Purpose section describes ‘violent attacks’ and claims that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of individuals experiencing homelessness are addicted or have mental illness. Rather than honouring CEDAW Article 2, which establishes an obligation to eliminate discrimination, this EO both stigmatises and criminalises individuals experiencing homelessness. EO Section 3 instructs federal agencies to prioritise grants to jurisdictions which enforce bans on open drug use, urban camping, loitering and squatting. It also directs federal agencies to move street-homeless individuals into treatment or institutions through civil commitment. By expanding civil commitment and curtailing harm-reduction programmes, the EO also conflicts with Article 12 and General Recommendation 35, which require states to ensure women’s access to health care and freedom from gender-based violence.

A clear move away from a rights-first approach, EO Section 4 and 5 instruct the HHS to cut funds from ‘harm reduction’ and ‘safe consumption’ programmes, along with directing that the HUD and the HHS end support for ‘housing-first’ policies. This undermines rights and evidence based approaches to addressing homelessness, despite it having been demonstrated that housing-first policies (permanent housing without preconditions) are some of the most effective when tackling homelessness, with retention figures coalescing around 80% in multiple randomised control trials. (Tsemberis, 2010; Aubry et al., 2015). This is compared with treatment-first or staircase models. There is a contradiction here with Article 14 of CEDAW which prioritises women’s living conditions, as the EO prioritises criminalisation rather than housing. There is ostensible protection in EO Section 5(d) which allows federally funded programmes to exclusively house women and children and restricts sex offenders from such programmes. But there is a critical tension here between a policy which could support women and children, and the reality of increasing policing and institutionalisation to the extent that it could be exponentially more harmful.

[1] Tsai J, Lampros A. Disproportionate Increases in Numbers and Rates of Homelessness Among Women in the United States, 2018-2022. Public Health Rep. 2025 Jan-Feb

[2] Ibid.

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ACTIVE CEDAW VIOLATION

HOMELESSNESS, GENDER AND THE JULY 2025 UNITED STATES EXECUTIVE ORDER

Dated: 5 February 2026

CEDAW-BASED LEGAL ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE VIOLATIONS

Following on from the above evidence, the below are clear active violations of CEDAW stemming from post-EO policy implementation.

Violation 1: Discriminatory Impact of Enforcement-Led Homelessness Policy (Articles 1, 2, 3)

1. Women are disproportionately represented in homeless families and unsheltered women are rising at a significantly faster rate than men at 25.1% between 2018-2022.

2. Enforcement based sweeps like those in Austin, SAFE Task Force and San Francisco, disproportionately harm women by removing survival items, disrupting stability and exposing them to interactions with the police.

3. Criminalising life-sustaining activities such as sleep and shelter, disproportionately punishes women, especially single mothers, who are often less able to comply with punitive conditions and more vulnerable to the harms that come about. These impacts are compounded for Black, Indigenous, migrant, disabled and LGBTQ+ women, who face intersecting forms of discrimination that CEDAW General Recommendation 28 explicitly requires states to address.

Violation 2: Failure to Ensure Women’s Right to Health and Safety (Article 12; GR 19/35)

1. In the EO, federal agencies are directed to expand civil commitment and reduce harm reduction programmes which undermines women’s access to voluntary, trauma informed health services.

2. In sweep practices, medications and essential items for chronic health conditions, pregnancy and childcare are repeatedly destroyed.

3. The shooting case in Houston illustrates the increased exposure to violence involved in women being unsheltered. CEDAW requires states to actively prevent gender based violence rather than to maintain the systems that facilitate it.

Violation 3: Denial of Adequate Housing and Essential Living Conditions

1. When enforcement is at the forefront, women and families are displaced without consideration for providing safe, gender appropriate shelter.

2. Oakland’s shelter deficit indicates a wider structural inadequacy and carrying out sweeps under these conditions violates the right to adequate shelter.

3. The low uptake rates in Austin (181 out of 1,212) suggests a mismatch between available shelter conditions and the safety needs of WEH.

Violation 4: Reinforcement of Gender Stereotypes & Punitive Treatment (Article 5)

1. The EOs framing of homelessness through a lens of moral failure and public disorder erases structural inequality. This then reinforces narratives that pathologise women bearing poverty and caregiving burdens.

2. Enforcement led approaches can lead to punishing vulnerability as women who avoid unsafe shelters are treated as ‘refusers’ rather than individuals seeking safety for themselves and their families.

Violation 5: Inadequate Structural and Policy Frameworks (Articles 2 and 3)

1. The disparity between different local and state responses illustrated by Oakland and Norwalk shows that the federal government has not adequately ensured consistent, rights based policy implementation.

2. The lack of gender-disaggregated data violates CEDAW’s requirement that states collect the data which is necessary to evaluate discrimination.

These findings could inform amicus briefs in litigation challenging encampment bans or civil commitment provisions along with policy briefs to HUD, HHS and state governors urging alignment with international human rights standards.

CONCLUSION: HOW TO BRING POLICIES INTO ALIGNMENT WITH CEDAW

1. Halt enforcement led encampment policies until safe alternatives exist which are women-safe, family appropriate and culturally competent in line with CEDAW Articles 2, 3 and 14. Requiring gender impact assessments before any encampment removal is a clear route to a safer approach.

2. Reinstate rights based housing policy by reversing EO 4-5 directives and returning to Housing First as the core federal strategy. Expanding funding for non-congregate, women-led and family oriented shelters would support this.

3. Suspend the destruction of property during encampment sweeps by implementing uniform ‘bag and tag’ policies which have independent oversight. Protective procedures need to be in place to guarantee the replacement of critical items like medication and ID.

4. Protect women from violence within encampments by establishing rapid rehousing policies for the most vulnerable women who may be pregnant or survivors of domestic violence. Training law enforcement and outreach teams on trauma informed approaches is also key.

5. Reverse the shift towards compulsory treatment and civil commitment by guaranteeing access to voluntary and non-coercive health services through the expansion of voluntary mental health and harm reduction programmes.

6. Improve data collection by requiring Continuums of Care to report demographic data for individuals experiencing homelessness and by including qualitative reporting from women with lived experience.

7. Conditioning federal grants on non-discrimination and alignment with CEDAW principles to ensure federal funding compliance. Supporting municipalities to expand inclusive shelter capacity would support this.

8. Request that the CEDAW Committee ask the US to report specifically on homelessness, disaggregated by gender, race, disability and migration status, in any future dialogue or shadow report review.

On 24 July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order (EO) “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s streets”. The language of this EO is clear in its framing of street homelessness as “endemic vagrancy” and a public safety threat, as it instructs HUD and HHS both to end support for Housing First and to tie funding to mandatory treatment participation. Exacerbating an existing crisis, this EO constitutes a contravention of CEDAW’s requirement to address structural barriers facing all women and Article 2’s obligation to eliminate discrimination, which although not ratified in the US, still acts as the international standard. This failure disproportionately harms WEH, especially those who are survivors of domestic violence, single mothers and those who face intersecting forms of discrimination. This exposes the falsity of the claim that U.S. law exceeds the protections required by CEDAW.

Authored by Jumeira Nathan is a Research Analyst at IWI with a focus on advancing gender equality and human rights through rigorous, inclusive research.

DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT

This document is prepared for, and addressed to, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson, the Members and staff of the United States House of Representatives as background material to assist them in their work, and the Supreme Court Justices of the United States Supreme Court. The content of the document is the sole responsibility of its author(s) and any opinions expressed herein should not be taken to represent an official opinion of the United States or its agencies.

Reproduction and translation for non-commercial purposes are authorised, provided the source is acknowledged and The IWI: International Women’s Initiative is given prior notice and sent a copy.

[1] Tsai J, Lampros A. Disproportionate Increases in Numbers and Rates of Homelessness Among Women in the United States, 2018-2022. Public Health Rep. 2025 Jan-Feb

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/23/governor-newsoms-safe-task-force-clears-los-angeles-encampment-partners-with-city-to-connect-people-with-shelter-and-care

[4] Rie Sakai-Bizmark, Alison Gemmill, Hiraku Kumamaru, Emily H Marr, Dennys Estevez, Frank Wu, Benjamin F Henwood, Physical intimate partner violence among women experiencing homelessness before and during pregnancy, American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 194, Issue 12, December 2025, Pages 3464–3471, https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaf003

[5] https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/23/governor-newsoms-safe-task-force-clears-los-angeles-encampment-partners-with-city-to-connect-people-with-shelter-and-care

[6] https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/23/governor-newsoms-safe-task-force-clears-los-angeles-encampment-partners-with-city-to-connect-people-with-shelter-and-care

ACTIVE CEDAW VIOLATION‍ ‍Homelessness, Gender and the July 2025 United States Executive Order