Blue City Blues
Twenty years ago, Dan Savage encouraged progressives to move to blue cities to escape the reactionary politics of red places. And he got his wish. Over the last two decades, rural places have gotten redder and urban areas much bluer.
America’s bluest cities developed their own distinctive culture, politics and governance. They became the leading edge of a cultural transformation that reshaped progressivism, redefined urbanism and remade the Democratic Party.
But as blue cities went their own way, as they thrived as economically and culturally vibrant trend-setters, these urban cosmopolitan islands also developed their own distinctive set of problems. Inequality soared, and affordability tanked. And the conversation about those problems stagnated, relegated to the narrowly provincial local section of regional newspapers or local NPR programming.
The Blue City Blues podcast aims to pick up where Savage’s Urban Archipelago idea left off, with a national perspective on the present and the future of urban America. We will consider blue cities as a collective whole. What unites them? What troubles them? What defines them?
Blue City Blues
Can Blue Urban America Find Common Ground with Trump on Homelessness?
On July 24, Donald Trump declared war on the homeless. At least that was how his Executive Order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” was received in blue urban America by many homeless advocates and Democratic elected officials.
With billions in federal funding at risk of being pulled from Housing First providers, who operate on the assumption that helping homeless people address their underlying issues like addiction or mental illness is most likely to be successful when those people are first housed, the National Alliance to End Homelessness denounced the EO as “a broadside threat to the nation’s homeless response systems, people experiencing homelessness, and the providers who serve them.”
At first read, the language of the EO certainly seems to take aim at the Housing First and harm reduction policies that hold sway in blue cities. It requires “ending support for ‘housing first’ policies that deprioritize accountability” while calling for expanded use of involuntary commitment to get mentally ill homeless people into institutional care. It even raises the specter of criminal sanctions against providers who “permit the use and distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control.”
But is this Executive Order really a declaration of total war on blue city approaches to homelessness? Or is there, embedded in its carefully worded language, some opportunity for Housing First advocates to find common ground with the Trumpist right?
For answers we turned to one of the main intellectual authors of the Trump EO, Devon Kurtz of the conservative Cicero Institute. In our conversation, Kurtz argues that common ground is not only possible, but is the desired outcome.
He argues that Housing First too often means Housing Only, and that programs that don't make serious efforts to address their clients’ underlying issues cause harm and should have their funding cut. But he contends that more responsible providers in blue cities should see the EO as an opportunity to put more emphasis on needed interventions like addiction treatment and job training for their clients. But Kurtz acknowledges that in our current polarized environment, whether blue cities and conservative advocates of more interventionist approaches to homelessness can reach an accommodation remains an open question.
Our editor is Quinn Waller.
Outside references:
Trump Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” July 24, 2025
Devon Kurtz, “Trump Forces D.C. to Get Real About Homelessness,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2025
Paul Webster and Devon Kurtz, “Trump’s Executive Order on Homelessness Is an Opportunity,” City Journal, Sept. 25, 2025
Seattle Nice podcast w (former BCB guest) Lisa Daugaard, "Trump's Homelessness Exec Order: Read the Fine Print Before Freaking O
Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com
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