The Trump Administration’s leading official on homelessness met with city and state officials in Denver last week as protesters accused him of supporting inhumane policies, Denverite reports.

Robert G. Marbut Jr. “does not believe in Housing First but instead believes all homeless individuals have to be ‘fixed’ before they deserve housing,” read a statement from Denver Homeless Out Loud on Feb. 21. The Housing First philosophy that homelessness advocates support prioritizes placing people in permanent housing before requiring treatment of substance abuse or employment issues.

Marbut, who is the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, told Denverite that he has been advocating for mental health care and drug rehabilitation to be provided while those experiencing homelessness are placed into housing. The administration’s goal, he said, is to ensure people leave “the entire homelessness assistance system.”

Denver Homeless Out Loud protested on Friday on the steps of the City and County Building, and described the administration’s philosophy as supporting “homeless concentration camps, criminalization, and housing only for ‘deserving’ individuals” in their statement.

The 2019 point-in-time count of the homeless population in Denver found 3,943 individuals were experiencing homelessness, 554 of whom were unsheltered. The total represented a 14% increase from the previous year.