(dramatic music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour and Company.

Here's what's coming up.

- My children go to sleep hungry.

They wake up in the morning hungry.

- A mother's cry, time is running out in Gaza as more starve to death.

Save the Children's humanitarian director, Rachel Cummings joins me from the enclave.

And the Israelis joining a growing international chorus.

I speak to the leaders of two leading human rights organizations in Israel who believe their government is committing genocide in Gaza.

Plus.

- If you incarcerate people, if you use involuntary placement in mental institutions, it does not solve homelessness.

- Homelessness in the United States, a crisis.

Why is it getting worse and what can be done to help?

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Thank you.

- Welcome to the program everyone.

I'm Christiana Amanpour in London.

89 children starved to death in Gaza, seven people in just the past 24 hours.

The limited air drops and increase in aid trucks is not nearly enough to slow this disaster unfolding before the whole world.

The EU is now warning that Gaza faces famine.

Here is some of the text.

The humanitarian situation has deteriorated to an unprecedented and unsustainable level driven by ongoing bombardment, military operations, mass displacement and the collapse of basic services.

The rising tide of criticism on this issue hits a peak with President Donald Trump who says starvation is happening there even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that it isn't.

Here in the UK, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised to recognize a Palestinian state unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire.

This resumption of this full scale war is now increasingly seen as a quote, total failure even by some within Israel.

The images of starving children simply speak for themselves.

My first guest, Rachel Cummings is Save the Children's humanitarian director in the enclave and she's joining me now from Deir al-Bala which is in central Gaza.

Rachel Cummings, welcome to the program.

Let me ask you first about Deir al-Bala and what you're seeing there because just last week we saw Israel send in its ground and air operations for the first time, certainly the first ground forces in more than 21 months of this war.

What has that meant for the people you're trying to serve there?

- Thank you.

The situation in Deir al-Bala across the whole of Gaza is catastrophic.

And last week, as you said, there was a ground incursion into Deir al-Bala about two kilometers from where we are here which displaced between 50 and 70,000 people.

But of course in Gaza, there is nowhere for people to go to.

So it was a very significant movement in terms of population displacement moving towards Kanunis al-Mawassi along the coast where there's literally nowhere for people to go.

And remember, Gaza, there was 12% of the land mass left for civilians.

The rest is either under militarized zone or evacuation notices.

It's extraordinarily overcrowded.

But the situation in Deir al-Bala remains untenable for the population here.

The markets are empty.

Yes, yesterday I was in Deir al-Bala market and there's nothing to buy.

And the other day, two days ago, I was in our clinic in Deir al-Bala and what I saw there was deeply shocking.

- Well, describe what you saw there because you've said, say the children were reporting record highs and quote, unprecedented rates of malnutrition in Gaza.

The number of children admitted for treatment in the first two weeks of July, they say, is close to the total for the whole of June.

So what are you seeing and what can you describe in terms of the limited amount of aid that has started coming in in response to this international furore?

- Well, as I said, what I'm seeing is there's no food.

There's not enough food in Gaza.

So when I was in the clinic two days ago, I was struck with two things.

One, every child in that clinic was malnourished.

And the other was, it was nearly silent, which is very unusual for a clinic full of children.

But of course, when children are this sick, they don't cry.

So I spoke to my team who are treating children who are malnourished and honestly, they were crying.

They are overwhelmed.

They don't know what to do because they know that the children they're treating today who are moderately, acutely malnourished will come back next week with severe acute malnutrition and the week after with severe acute malnutrition complications.

Children are on a downward trajectory in terms of their outcomes and the malnutrition treatments because of course, children cannot live or survive with plump peanut or peanut paste alone.

They need complementary food.

They need food and diet diversity, which they do not have.

It's a very, very significant shift that we're seeing.

And I said, you know, about two weeks ago, I felt we reached a tipping point in Gaza and we're now seeing in our clinic in Darabala and in Kanunis, but this is represented with all of the data from all of the partners across Gaza is that we're now seeing this doubling of the number of children presenting who are malnourished.

And the proportion of children in the population has gone from 4.4% in May to now 16.5% in July, in the first few weeks of July.

And also very concerning is that pregnant women and breastfeeding women, that rate sits at 40%.

So four out of 10 pregnant and breastfeeding women are themselves malnourished.

So a very, very deeply concerning trajectory and this exponential rise that we're seeing in the numbers and the rates of malnutrition.

This obviously requires significant intervention at scale to be able to turn the trajectory and to save the children here.

- Rachel Cummings, you've been there for a while and you have probably seen, or at least heard of the airdrops that started over the weekend and some more, I guess, trucks going in.

Can you just describe, for instance, the result of the airdrops?

Do you know how much has come?

Do you know whether people have been able, the right people have been able to access it?

Do you know whether it's, I mean, is it enough?

- No, it's wholly inadequate.

And of course it's ineffective at best, but actually what it is, is extremely dangerous.

So I saw visibly today from the window, four airdrops across Gaza.

And you may be able to hear the drone that's circling this evening.

And what we found in the last two or three days is following the airdrops, they put the drones up to be able to watch, I guess, what's happening on the ground.

Unfortunately today, we also heard, and it's unconfirmed, but three people were killed by an airdrop landing in their shelter along al-Mawassi.

Now, just today when I saw the airdrops coming, it was extraordinary.

And what you hear is now a loud plane, a heavy, heavy plane, which sounds quite different to the jets that we have constantly.

So you hear the heavy, heavy plane carrying the supplies.

And then the first thing you hear after that is the children running and crying along the street.

And I saw that today.

And then of course you look up and you can see the parachutes.

And these parachutes are carrying 300, 400, 500 kilograms.

Half a ton of weight is coming down.

And I saw today again, with my own eyes, two parachutes that became entwined.

And one parachute just didn't open and it dropped straight to the ground.

They're dangerous.

Are people receiving the aid that need to?

Absolutely not.

They are dropping aid without warning.

People will run, of course they will, because they are absolutely desperate.

People are literally starving in Gaza.

So they will take any opportunity they can to find food to feed their families.

But that of course doesn't take into account any of the vulnerable population.

So pregnant women, elderly, disabled, children who manage households, all of these need food assistance and need humanitarian support.

But of course they are not the people who will be able to make it to the aid drops.

And then in terms of the humanitarian supplies that have come in, so for the last three days, maybe four days, the UN has been trying to bring in around 100 trucks a day of generally food supplies, but also some medicines and potentially, I think, some hygiene supplies, which of course all are essential to sustain life and all are completely depleted in the markets in Gaza.

So whatever they're bringing in is not going to touch the fags.

Unfortunately, in terms of the starvation crisis and of course the disease outbreaks that we're seeing, and we've been seeing this for months.

- Rachel, can I ask you a question?

Because the Israeli side keeps saying that it's basically on you all.

You all should be delivering these trucks, which apparently they say are waiting, loaded with aid to be delivered.

What is your answer to that?

I mean, what's the problem with these trucks?

- The enabling environment, the environment of Gaza is a extremely complex and challenging environment to move supplies around.

So you have broken infrastructure, the roads have been completely smashed.

So trucks literally ability to move along are very, very hampered.

But of course, you're also dealing with a population or trying to support a population who are starving, who are hungry, who are desperate to try and feed their families.

So you will have seen the pictures of people jumping on trucks, trying to stop the trucks, trying to get the bag of flour to take home to feed their families.

But of course you also have organized crime, organized criminality, and there is no law and order in Gaza that has been completely dismantled.

So you have these multiple influencing pieces.

You put that together and it becomes nearly impossible to move supplies.

But of course, if you have such limited supplies coming into Gaza, you, through January and March, during the last pause in the hostilities, there were 600 trucks a day coming into Gaza with a mix of humanitarian and commercial supplies.

And that was enough to meet the basic needs of the most of the people in Gaza.

Since the 2nd of March, there's been no humanitarian supplies entered Gaza until the trickle that started at the end of May.

So what we have is a sustained siege of supplies coming into Gaza.

Nothing's entered Gaza.

So of course you have, now of course, we've seen the result of that, which is increased rates of malnutrition, increased rates of diarrhea, and the desperation of people who just need to feed their families.

- And of course, all your UN agencies are warning that time is running out to mount a full-scale humanitarian response.

Rachel Cummings, thank you.

Thank you for being with us.

And thank you for telling us what's going on inside as we cannot get in to report this.

Thank you very much indeed.

Amid the starvation crisis in Gaza and the 60,000 people killed there, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak now says Israel is becoming a global pariah.

And he's even calling for, quote, "massive non-violent civil disobedience" until Netanyahu is ousted.

And now in separate reports released simultaneously this week, two leading human rights organizations, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, say the government is committing genocide in Gaza.

The Israeli government has issued furious denials.

Let's now bring in B'Tselem's Executive Director, Yuli Novak, along with Guy Shalev, the CEO of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, who both joined me from Tel Aviv.

And it's important to say that this is unprecedented.

No other Israeli organization has taken this step despite mounting use of this word and accusations of this crime against the current government.

So let me ask you, Yuli Novak, first, because B'Tselem has been a leading human rights organization for decades in your country.

Since you actually issued this report, what has the response been inside Israel and amongst the Jewish population worldwide?

- So thank you, Christiane.

I'll just say that in our report, what we try to explain there is exactly the how of what we just heard with your previous guest.

So how did we get to where we are?

How does this Israeli system work?

And what we try to write about and to investigate and to analyze is the policy behind it.

And that goes also to your question about how Israelis and Israeli society react to it, because this is part and parcel of the fact that genocide is being committed now by this regime.

No genocide in history happened without the support, either by taking part or supporting it from afar, or just turning a blind eye of the people, of the group of the perpetrators.

And unfortunately, and it is heartbreaking for me as an Israeli, this is exactly what takes place now in Israel.

You asked about the reaction to our reports.

I would say that 99% of Israelis didn't hear about our report, because part of what the Israeli media is doing is completely deny Israeli public from knowing what's going on.

First of all, and then there is the overall sentiment and something that became almost normal, the incitement for genocide.

So I think, again, it is devastating as an Israeli, but it's a really good example for how disconnected people that conduct genocide can be from what they actually do.

- Before I get into the details of your allegations in this long report, 79 pages, I want to also ask Guy Shalev from Physicians for Human Rights, the Israeli chapter.

Israel is a nation that was born out of genocide, out of the Holocaust.

This is an unprecedented internal Israeli accusation against the government of committing similar crimes now in Gaza.

Again, what led you at this time to decide that it was right to use this word, this legal term, in terms of what's going on right now?

What was the criteria for you?

- Right, so first of all, as Yuli said, we are doing it with a heavy heart.

Because of our history, my personal family history and my people's history, it's not an easy moment to be, to accuse my own society, my own communities in committing genocide.

And for us, we are sticking to the international law, the definition, according to the Genocide Convention that Israel is signed on.

And we're looking at the cumulative information that we are gathering from the ground for almost two years.

We've been working every day in emergency mode for the past almost two years to collect the data, to speak with our colleagues in the Gaza healthcare system.

And we're looking at the attack, the systematic attack on Gaza's healthcare system and all life-sustaining systems.

And when we look at that together, attack after attack, hospital after hospital, blocking of water, blocking of food, destruction of infrastructure that's just needed for people to survive, that's when we get to the conclusion that a genocide is being committed, unfortunately.

- So your organization focuses a lot on the medical and the doctors and the hospitals that we have seen and we've reported.

So I understand, yours is using that set of information.

So you talk about the UN Convention, and indeed the crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as, quote, "The intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, "ethnical, racial, or religious group as such."

And Yuli, based on B'Tselem's examination, you reached the, quote, "Unequivocal conclusion "that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action "to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip."

So as you know, as well as I do, that the issue would be intent.

Obviously, Israel denies any intent to do that and clearly consistently denies that it is targeting deliberately civilians and that it is going after Hamas.

So you must have built a case around intent, not just what you're observing.

So is that correct?

Am I correct?

- I'll start.

I'll say that you just read the legal definition, which is important, but first of all, let's all remember that genocide happened way before 1948.

I mean, the legal definition didn't create the phenomena, the social and political phenomena of attacking another group in order to destroy it.

And when we are doing this legal analysis, which is super important because perpetrators should be brought to justice, that's not what help people on the ground today.

And this cannot be only a theoretical discussion.

So let's talk about intent as we see it, as people who have eyes and ears and mind to think.

When the top leadership of Israel stands in the first days of this attack, and I'm talking about the prime minister, the minister of defense, even the president himself, and telling us what's the goal of this attack.

They're telling us, "Destroy Amalek."

That means destroy everybody.

They are telling us, "We are fighting human animals "and we'll treat them as such," and I quote.

They say it's an entire nation there that is responsible for the crimes of Hamas on October 7th.

So when you hear that, and then you look on the results and the outcomes, which we just heard about, and you listen to the commanders and the soldiers on the ground, and take all this into account, together with the fact that even if they didn't know it before, which I have a really hard time to believe, once they saw the outcome of their statements, they for sure understand what it means to send an all-army to attack civilians in another area, and instructing them to destroy this all population, telling them that there are no civilian people there.

And that exactly comes back to the intention of genocide, because again, genocide is about attacking people who are being attacked only because they are part of a group, not because what they did personally, not because what they think or who they are, and the second thing, that they have no way to protect themselves.

So I'll just say, Israel talking about a war with Hamas, but what we are talking about here is genocide.

It's a war that Israel started in attacking the entire population of the Gaza Strip.

And that was very clear from their statements from the first day and until today.

- Can I ask you here, because I'm going to go through some of these quotes that you've just talked about and that we all heard, and that led a lot in the international community to criticize Israeli leaders for making these comments at the beginning and still.

But you said Israel started this.

They will say, no, we didn't.

Hamas started this on October 7th.

So I want to ask you both whether you are prepared to also say that Hamas showed genocidal intent and committed a genocide if they could have done more what they did by targeting an ethnical, religious, national group on October 7th.

Let me just ask you, Guy.

I don't know whether you've thought about this, but it's a question that other lawyers are asking.

- I think, first of all, analyzing what Hamas has done on October 7th is something that is very important.

Also looking at the crimes done by Hamas, war crimes, crimes against humanity during this attack is something that is very important to do.

But it's always important to remember that according to international law, according to international humanitarian law, there is no connection between what one party does to what the other party does.

And whatever crimes Hamas have done, and they have done that, the crimes, very horrible crimes in October 7th, it doesn't excuse or it doesn't justify any crimes done afterwards by Israel in their attack.

And I want to address also the question of intent, if I may.

The Genocide Convention addresses not only mass killings, bodily harm, but Article 2C of the Convention deals with the systematic infrastructure attack on a people in order to destroy that people.

And this is the article that we are focusing in our report on the attack on health care and health sustaining infrastructure.

And when you look at the attack and the attack on health care, you see pattern of conduct.

You see an attack after attack.

Already in October 13, just five days after the attack started, Israel issued 22 evacuation orders for 22 hospitals in the entire area of the Gaza City and the northern part of the strip.

More than one million civilians were in that area at that time.

How are they going-- how they will be able to survive if all of their hospitals are evacuated?

What happens to the patients?

What happens to the staff members?

These are not coincidental.

This is a policy.

It's a decision made.

And a decision made that the results are very, very clear.

And when we look at these attacks, these policies, one after the other, for 22 months of destroying a hospital after hospital, killing more than 1,500 doctors and medical workers, detaining more than 300, these are policies that we unfortunately see the results now on the ground.

Let me just ask you, Guy, because I have to.

As you know, Israel says Hamas inhabits those hospitals underneath gun positions, command centers.

What do you say to that?

Maybe I'll ask you back.

Have you seen the evidence?

I have not, because I haven't been there.

And this is another huge problem, Guy.

It's a huge problem.

We, international journalists, who are fully equipped to be able to see and analyze and report what's going on, and who've spent a whole career doing it, have not been allowed in there.

I'm just asking you to respond to their response.

And what the US says, and what the Brits say, and what the Europeans have said throughout, you know, it's their defense.

No, no, I want to hear Guy.

So the fact is that the evidence that-- yeah, so the evidence that they presented is very thin.

Israel attacked 33 of the 36 medical facilities in Gaza.

For each and every of these facilities, they claim that Hamas has a command center within the premises of these hospitals, apart from two.

And later on, Israel took control of these and these facilities, wing by wing, department by department.

They had full control over the entire premises of these institutions, but still did not present the evidence.

Of course, we can assume that if Israel had the evidence of command centers in each and every of these hospitals, they would present it to the world.

Because, of course, they would want to show that they act according to this evidence.

But unfortunately, there is no evidence.

And the proportionality is another thing.

You cannot destroy an entire system, an entire system of health care, providing for more than 2 million people with these very vague and general accusations.

And we can see the result now.

People are essentially wasting away.

They can't get the medicine.

They can't get the care.

And they are starving.

So, Yuli, I want to ask you, Yuli, some critics have said that using this particular legal term, which is a step above the general accusation of war crimes, which even some Israelis, such as your former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Defense Secretary or Defense Minister Moshe Yairon and others, use the word war crimes.

But they haven't gone to the word genocide.

But I want to ask you, what do you think the result will be?

Will Israel take your -- will the government take your report and say, we're going to do something about this?

Or will they go into a greater defensive crouch and, I don't know, fight back harder?

What do you think?

I guess what's your ultimate goal?

>> Yeah, so our ultimate goal is to save lives and to protect human rights.

And, no, I don't think the Israeli government showed us any sign that they are about to do it.

They don't care about what we say, about what you say, about what the international media say.

They proven us that.

Actually, they are becoming more and more delusional.

You just asked a guy about the medical system.

They are also claiming that there is no starvation in Gaza, right?

So I wouldn't count on them not to stop it by themselves, not to understand the depth of this disaster that they are bringing upon this land, not only because dozens of thousands of people are getting -- got killed and starved and getting killed, but because what they are doing is taking out the most basic sense and rules and norms of humanity out of this space.

And that is what genocide is about, is about marking a group of people as non-humans, strip them from their humanity and their rights, and then you can do whatever you can to them.

And then if -- just to say, there is no justification for that.

Israel can say whatever they want and use whatever excuse, whether it is Hamas, whether it is October 7th, or whatever.

And October 7th was real.

For all of us, it was probably the scariest day of most Israelis, I know, including me.

But that doesn't allow you to start a war against the entire people in order to destroy them and to eliminate them.

So in that sense, no, I don't think Israel government will do anything.

What I do hope for is that leaders of the world, which not for the first time see genocide live, know exactly what happened, very much aware, we are all very much aware of what takes place on the ground.

And I agree with you, once journalists will go in, probably we will see reality that is much worse than anything we know.

It is not the first time that leaders of the world allow a regime to attack people in that way, to conduct genocide, and they are either standing by and let it happen, or keep cooperating with it and enabling this horror to take place.

So in that sense, I think it is not only an issue of the victims, the Palestinians, or the Israelis as the perpetrators.

Genocide is an issue that every human being should be concerned about and stand against.

And people of the world need to demand from their leaders to do whatever they can in order to stop the Israeli government from keep doing that.

Can I ask you both, because part of the big report you have put out, I know they are separate reports, but nonetheless, you have used, and you mentioned it earlier on in this interview, several quotes from Israeli leaders.

You quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu about Amalek, which I know goes back to a biblical and historical fight back after an attack.

But that, they now say, part of that quote is actually on the Yad Vashem monument.

It is part of an Israeli internal, you know, you fight back when you are attacked.

That is one response.

When President Isaac Herzog in October said, it is an entire nation out there that is responsible.

It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who are not aware and not involved.

It is absolutely not true.

And we will fight until we break their backbone.

And then we are told that in the same appearance he goes on to say there is no excuse to murdering innocent civilians in any way, in any context.

And then, of course, we have got Defense Minister Yoav Galant in the beginning in October calling for a complete siege.

And I think he said no food, no water, no electricity, saying we are fighting human animals.

In his context, again, his defenders say he was referring to Hamas, not all people of Gaza.

Deputy Knesset Speaker Nisim Vaturi from the LiKood Party posted that Israelis had one common goal, quote, erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.

So there are a lot of very, very hard comments that have been made by your leaders that would lead you to make certain conclusions.

But what do you say when they say, well, no, this was the context and this is what we said, you know, also?

So I would say first, leaders should take responsibility.

And our leaders definitely don't know how to do it, not when it concerns their own Israeli Jewish citizens, right, that they are being left to die in the hands of Hamas in captivity, and for sure not when it has to do with Palestinians' lives.

And, you know, I'm sorry, I can't accept it.

I didn't mean that.

Well, you are a prime minister, and if you realize that you did something that turned -- you said something that turned into a genocide, into a mass killing, into a mass destruction that goes on and on and on for almost two years now, you had enough opportunities to stop it.

And, you know, as we sit now here and talk, bulldozers and D-9 are rushing through whatever is left of Palestinian cities in Gaza in order just to ruin it, just to make sure, as Guy said before, that there will be no way to sustain life there.

That's what the Israeli army is doing now, just as it was ordered by statements of officials that you just read, and for if anyone is questioning -- no, they didn't stop with this incitement.

The Israeli public discourse, including our politicians, but not only, is full of incitement to genocide, a clear incitement to genocide that mostly is directed towards Gaza, but we have to say here, and that's also in our report, we are also here to warn about the possibility that the genocide will not stay confined to Gaza, because the same regime with the same army, the same commanders, and sometimes the same practices, even if in a lower scale, are taking place in the West Bank.

And right now there is no mechanism, either local or international, that is working to stop or able or want to stop Israel from doing it, and the Palestinians everywhere under Israeli control is now left completely unprotected.

>> Guy -- >> I'm going to say something about -- sorry.

>> Let me just ask you this, because we may be running out of time, but in the report you basically both say the October 7th Hamas attack led to "profound social and political changes in Israeli society."

So, Guy, I just want you to reflect on that, and also a personal question to you both, of the toll it's taken on you to collect this and to report it, knowing that your nation will not thank you for this.

Guy?

>> Right.

So, yeah, when we look at the attack on Gaza, it, of course, hasn't started in October 7th.

We look much more to the past.

We see how the dehumanization of Palestinians is part of Israeli culture and Israeli politics for many, many years, and definitely the October 7th attack, with the trauma it aroused in Israeli society, was a trigger, a very dangerous trigger for people to just consider the other as less human than they are.

It caused people to not want to engage, not want to get the information.

That is what our two organizations are really struggling with.

We are collecting the data, speaking in Hebrew with the people here, with our families, our communities.

We want them to know.

We want them to know what's going on, because denial is what allows these atrocities to continue, and we are hoping that by them reading, getting to know what's being done in their name will get people here in Israel to rise up, demand the government to stop these attacks, and hopefully stop the genocide.

>> Well, you know, I mean, Ehud Barak has asked for peaceful, nonviolent mass resistance.

Yulia, in the last 30 seconds that we have, how are you feeling after doing this?

Are you afraid?

>> I am afraid, but not more than I was two days ago or three days ago.

I am afraid about the future of this place, about my ability to raise my son here.

What I do feel a bit better is the fact that we were able in our organizations, Israelis and Palestinians, we have dozens of Palestinians from the West Bank, from Gaza, and from inside Israel, who work together with Jewish Israelis to try and make sense of what we see around, although this making sense is a horrific reality that we need to face, and to struggle together, opposing also the polarization and the imagination that we can't -- that this imaginative thing that -- or act is that we cannot live together.

So basically what we are trying to do here is take forward the struggle of the people, of the people who live here, in order to create a space where we all can live safely.

>> Well, Yuli Novak, executive director of B'Tselem and Guy Shalev, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, thank you both very much for joining us on this important report.

And now in the United States, where more than 770,000 people experienced homelessness in one single night in 2024.

Hari Sreenivasan speaks to Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, who has experienced this struggle firsthand.

>> Christian, thanks, Donald Whitehead, thanks so much for joining us.

President Trump recently laid out an executive order about homelessness.

What's it about?

>> It covers a number of things, all very horrifying.

It encourages cities to enforce -- enforce forced institutionalization in mental health institutions and jails, and we think maybe even detention camps, and forcing people into substance abuse treatment.

It also discourages some of the programs that we have seen have best outcomes, they are best practices, those programs are discouraged.

And funding will be taken away if people use things like harm reduction, or if they don't criminalize people.

>> In there, it says, surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor any other citizens.

My administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.

Is public safety a problem because of an increase in the homeless population?

>> The safety is really people experiencing homelessness who are more likely, and people with mental health issues, who are far more likely to be victimized than any member of the public.

And furthermore, I would say that this particular executive order doesn't do anything to solve homelessness.

If you incarcerate people, if you use involuntary placement in mental institutions, it does not solve homelessness.

What solves homelessness is housing, supportive services, health care, and jobs that pay livable wages.

>> So there's a couple of different layers I want to unpack here.

One is when you look at the surveys over time, isn't homelessness on the rise?

>> Sure.

Homelessness is on the rise.

But it's on the rise for reasons other than anything related to criminalization.

Homelessness is on the rise because housing costs are on the rise.

So there's a direct correlation between the rise in housing costs across the country and the number of people who are experiencing homelessness.

We've seen a rise in the number of people 55 and older experiencing homelessness.

We've also seen a rise in these kind of practices that criminalize.

And what I mean by criminalize is they jail, they ticket, and they find people experiencing homelessness, which actually increases the likelihood that they won't be able to get out of homelessness.

So I believe that the criminalization -- we've seen 320 new cities institute laws that would criminalize homeless people since the dreadful Supreme Court decision last year that said even though nowhere in this country there's enough shelter or enough housing for people experiencing homelessness, cities are able to institute these measures that criminalize people experiencing homelessness.

>> So we saw that in part as a reaction to the encampments that were happening in cities like, say, Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, et cetera, and that there are now cities who want to prevent that from happening in their own backyard, right?

Now I wonder at the same time when you look at the perception of reality, the public opinion polls, you see an increasing number of people saying that homelessness is a problem.

Is that because of how these stories, for example, come out on the news or on YouTube, et cetera, or is there something else?

>> Well, I think public perception is actually guided by misinformation.

So we've done our own internal polling, and we've worked with other groups that are in the homeless sector, and what we find is that 70 percent of the people do think that there is an issue with homelessness, but they don't believe that you should fine, arrest, or jail people.

Again, that does not solve homelessness.

What we need to solve homelessness is more affordable housing.

We need a dramatic influx of housing production in this country if we're going to solve homelessness.

If you look at reports out of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, you'll see that housing wage in this country is above $20 an hour.

Minimum wage is $7 an hour.

People can't keep up with housing under those conditions.

We don't think people should be living under bridges and in abandoned buildings and encampments, especially our elderly population, children, other groups.

No one should have to live outside.

Everybody should have a decent, safe, and affordable home, but we're not producing more housing.

The President's budget actually zeroed out housing programs.

It actually would cut term limits for housing, so people would only be able to stay in housing for two years.

Those are all recipes for disaster, and so this administration needs to really use evidence-based information and look at the true underlying structural causes of homelessness.

So what does the evidence-based information say?

What are programs that actually help people not be homeless anymore?

Great question.

One is the Permanent Supportive Housing Program.

Now, when researchers have looked at that program, there is a 90% success rate.

One of the provisions in this executive order says that people utilizing those kinds of programs.

So this is a program where people are taken off the street, they're put in their housing unit, and they're provided an array of wraparound services for mental health, for substance abuse, and this program is designed for people who have been homeless the longest, who have the highest probability of not being able to get out on their own.

And we know that those services, substance abuse treatment, behavioral health treatment, all of those things are better done for people in a stable unit.

It's really hard to provide those kind of services when someone is sleeping in an outdoor location.

That program, again, has a 90% success rate in studies.

And so it just absolutely boggles the mind to think that that kind of program would be one that this administration has an issue with.

So you're saying, for example, the 90% success rate based on the facts of how these programs work and what's been measured, but there's also this perception that, oh, you know what, providing more services to homeless people or mentally ill people, I mean, this is to some extent their fault.

They got themselves into this, and that we collectively should not be trying to give them assistance after a certain point.

What's wrong with that?

Well, a lot of things that are wrong with that.

In fact, we know that behavioral health issues, mental health issues, disability issues, developmental delays are medical issues.

People don't cause themselves to have those kind of issues.

Substance abuse is a disease.

So these are not moral failures.

Homelessness didn't increase to the level it is because people failed morally.

It increased because we stopped providing mental health services after deinstitutionalization.

We stopped providing jobs that pay livable wages in this country.

It now costs, again, over $20 an hour if you only pay 30% of your income for housing to be able to afford the housing long-term.

These are structural issues.

It's not a personal moral failure that there is an overrepresentation of people of color in the homeless population.

Most African-Americans, people from the Native American communities are severely overrepresented,and it doesn't correlate with poverty.

So we have some deep, deep structural issues that we have to solve if we're going to change homelessness.

And the last thing I'll say about that is that the reason we are here is because every other time -- there's been four segments of homelessness in our history in this country.

Every other time there has been a response from the federal government that lowered those numbers, made those numbers virtually disappear, and I'm talking about New Deal programs, Social Security, Medicare.

We have not seen that in the last 40 years.

This is the longest continuous period of homelessness, and we've never provided resources to the level of the problem.

>> You know, if we see that this problem has been getting worse, is that an indictment on the fact that our policies are not working?

I mean, maybe that's part of what's motivating this approach by the administration.

>> So, again, I would say that when we have done things that would be preventative in nature, that prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, expanded housing production, it has worked.

We saw that during COVID.

We saw communities move away from congregate shelters with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, to smaller individual settings.

We saw eviction prevention dollars put in place.

We saw emergency housing vouchers, and housing vouchers are one of the best solutions to homelessness.

The permanent supportive housing program I talked about is a great program for a portion of the population.

It is not a be-all and end-all.

We need much more.

We need vouchers.

Everybody deserves, again, a safe place to live.

Another issue that this executive order fails to recognize is the number of children that we see enter this population.

Certainly we don't consider our children in the school system, almost 1.5 million of them, criminals.

So there is a need to look at this issue comprehensively.

What we've been forced to do as a sector is to choose portions of the population because we were forced to operate in a scarcity model where they picked a population, sometimes it was veterans, sometimes it was the chronically homeless, but we never have gotten to scale with the resources for this issue where it was a comprehensive solution.

So I agree with you, the policies have been failed, but the policies are not on the part of people experiencing homelessness.

They should not be blamed for the growth of homelessness.

We have a federal government and elected officials who have never addressed the problem in a comprehensive way.

When you look at the population of homelessness, is the proportion of people with mental illnesses and mental health problems rising?

I mean, the numbers in New York, it's somewhere around 17% and almost a quarter of the population in California.

I mean, is the administration right to try and target this population?

The president says for those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions where they belong with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage.

Well, it is certainly a great need.

We do have a proportion of the population that does suffer from mental illness and many that suffer from severe mental illness.

We learned in the '50s, we learned almost 70 years ago that that was not -- putting large numbers of people into mental institutions was a field policy.

That's how we got to deinstitutionalization.

What was a much better solution was smaller community-based facilities where people got to have agency but address their mental health at the same time.

So what is being proposed is detention camps and putting people in institutions, basically warehousing them.

And there is no housing that's attached to this.

So that's a very important point here.

So if you put people in those institutions, and I'll repeat this, or you put them in a correction facility, one of the largest concentrations of people that have mental health issues is the Los Angeles County Jail, for instance.

They don't have housing when they leave those institutions.

And so you haven't done anything but disappeared people, made people believe that you were doing something to address homelessness when really you're hiding the issue.

But it does not solve homelessness.

It removes people from systems of care that they've engaged in that will help towards their eventual escape from homelessness.

People are forced into that issue.

They want treatment.

The treatment's just not available.

New York tried to do a forced institutionalization.

They found that there were hundreds of thousands of beds less than the need for people that needed that particular intervention.

And that would be the same everywhere in this country.

We have to do something very different than warehousing people.

It does not work.

We've seen horrific videos, you know, 50 years ago, and we don't want to return to that.

But we think this is kind of a recipe for us to return to that.

>> Is the executive order constitutional?

Is this going to be challenged in the courts?

>> So I think it will be challenged in the courts, but it is crafted in a way that the administration will have a little bit of freedom until they actually start to implement it.

So there certainly will be challenges, but not immediately because of the way it's crafted.

So we have been in touch with some of the larger legal institutions in the country and those within the homeless sector, and we are crafting a strategy.

This won't go unaddressed.

It won't be -- we will provide a legal resistance to this particular order, and that idea is being shaped now.

>> Donald, why is this so personal for you?

>> Part of it is because I care about other people.

But the other issue is I've experienced homelessness myself.

And I experienced it twice.

I experienced it as a child, and I experienced it as an adult.

And since that time, I've been able to save tens of maybe hundreds of thousands of people.

I put 200 people that I found on the streets of Prince George's County, Maryland, into units during COVID.

So it is very personal.

I talk to people experiencing homelessness every day.

And I'll tell you, I answer an e-mail box that is frequently and every day I see more and more people that are really, really concerned.

They're saying, "I'm homeless, and I just heard that I'm going to be arrested.

What should I do?"

Those are the things I'm hearing in our info box.

So every one of those stories touches me.

Because of my own personal experience, I know what it's like to be homeless.

I know what it's like to be harassed while I was on the street.

So it really hits home on a personal level.

And I am committed to doing everything I can to make sure that we push back against this executive order.

>> Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, Donald Whitehead, thanks so much for your time.

>> Well, thank you so much.

And I really appreciate you bringing attention to this issue.

It is so, so important.

>> That's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up on the show every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

Thanks for watching, and goodbye from London.