Sponsors (11)
Official title: To establish within the Department of Health and Human Services a Division on Community Safety, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 15, 2025 by Summer Lee · Last progress July 15, 2025
The bill channels substantial federal funding and supports to community-led, non-police safety, housing, and health services—especially for marginalized communities—while trading off higher federal spending, increased administrative requirements, and limits on local flexibility that may produce political resistance or exclude some grassroots groups.
Low-income communities, people with high criminal-justice contact, racial-ethnic minorities, people experiencing homelessness, and people with mental-health or substance-use needs will receive expanded federal grants for community-based violence-interruption, crisis response, behavioral-health and harm-reduction services, housing supports, and jobs/training (including $17/hr wage floors), funded
Marginalized groups (Black, Latine/x, Indigenous, low-income, LGBTQIA+), people harmed by the criminal legal system, Tribal-serving organizations, and immigrants are prioritized for funding and culturally/linguistically appropriate services, increasing resources led by or directed to affected communities.
Federal coordination, data collection, research funding, and required participatory safety-needs assessments (including input from people harmed by the criminal legal system) will build an evidence base for alternatives to policing and inform better public-safety policy nationwide.
Taxpayers face higher federal spending pressure from roughly $13.5 billion in grants over 2026–2030, which could increase budgetary strain or require offsets elsewhere.
Local governments and community groups will incur increased administrative, planning, and reporting burdens (participatory safety assessments, detailed data submissions, compliance) that can slow program rollout and raise operating costs.
Grant rules limiting funds to 'qualified approaches,' anti-supplanting restrictions, matching-fund expectations, and narrow CLT definitions reduce local flexibility and can disproportionately burden poorer or rural jurisdictions.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes an HHS Division and grant programs to fund, coordinate, and scale community-led, non-carceral approaches to public safety and supports for those harmed by the criminal legal system.
Creates a new Division on Community Safety within HHS to fund, coordinate, research, and provide technical assistance for community-led alternatives to criminal-legal system responses. It establishes advisory and interagency bodies, defines eligible community safety activities and organizations, and creates rolling grant programs to support community organizations, local governments, states, and first responder hiring for non-carceral crisis response and violence-prevention work, with priority for communities disproportionately harmed by policing, incarceration, detention, or deportation.