The National Homelessness Law Center Warns That Cicero Institute-Backed Bills Are Spreading Nationwide, Criminalizing Survival
States are inventing new ways to criminalize homelessness, mainly led by a shadowy nonprofit that is pushing template legislation across the country, according to a new report.
The new approaches involve creating “drug-free zones” around homeless shelters and punishing everyday Americans for helping people who are homeless. According to research from the National Homelessness Law Center, five states have introduced this kind of legislation. Those states are Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Arizona, and Utah, all of which have Republican-majority legislatures.
The bills being pushed through these legislatures were all modeled after legislation created by The Cicero Institute, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit led by billionaire tech entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale. Lonsdale helped found Palantir, a data analytics company that the federal government has hired to create data profiles of American citizens.
Since 2021, the Cicero Institute has helped pass anti-homeless legislation in nine states. The bills include provisions that outlaw camping on public land, prevent cities from using taxpayer funds for temporary shelters, and increase police enforcement of encampments.
The new approach to criminalizing homelessness comes at a time when homelessness continues to grow rapidly across the country. Over the last year, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased 18% up to more than 771,000, as high rents and home prices forced many low-income earning households out of their homes.
“Cicero continues to promote skewed public opinion polling in an attempt to drum up support for their deeply misguided approaches,” the report reads in part. “However, both mountains of research and recent public polling show their backwards laws are both ineffective and deeply unpopular, with nearly three out of every four Americans choosing against laws that make it a crime to be homeless.”
How Harmful New Laws Are Making Shelters Less Safe
Invisible People has covered several of the harmful new laws that state legislatures have introduced.
For instance, we spoke with advocates and service providers in Arizona about a bill that would create “drug-free zones” around homeless shelters. Shelter providers told us that the bill would force them to act as quasi-police officers, which could make it much harder for them to gain the trust of the people they serve.
“It’s going to make it harder to access shelter,” Ross Schaefer, who leads Flagstaff Shelter Services in Arizona, told Invisible People. “If people feel like they’re going to get something taken from them, and they choose not to come inside because of that, then we run the risk of exacerbating all the reasons why people need to come inside in the first place, like safety and reducing exposure to the elements.”
Advocates like Jamie Podratz, public policy analyst for the Arizona Housing Coalition, added that political opportunism is the driving force behind these harmful laws.
“I don’t want to discount the frustration that people feel when they see people experiencing homelessness or on their city streets and in their parks,” Podratz said. “It’s just these drug-free homeless zones aren’t going to fix that.”
Invisible People has also witnessed how encampment crackdowns disproportionately affect the most vulnerable members of a community.
Encampment sweeps have been proven to be a costly, ineffective, and dangerous way to address homelessness. Encampment sweeps not only make the root causes of homelessness worse, but they also dehumanize and traumatize people who are homeless.
That’s why advocates spoke out so forcefully against California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to expedite encampment sweeps across the state.
“Punishing people for being unhoused in a system that fails to offer safe shelter is unjust and shortsighted,” said Tori Truscheit, senior director of strategic partnerships at Sacred Heart Community Services in San Jose.
Growing Anti-Homeless Sentiment
The NHLC report also notes that these anti-homeless laws are having a sustained impact, even when they do not pass.
Several states have passed measures criminalizing homelessness without the help of the Cicero Institute. For example, California created a template encampment ordinance for cities to pass. The bill prohibits cities from allowing encampments to form and allows cities to give as little as 48 hours’ notice before a sweep begins.
Other states, such as Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, and Oregon, have also passed standalone anti-camping legislation, according to NHLC’s report.
Many of these laws were introduced following the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2024 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson. The court’s opinion effectively gave cities permission to address homelessness with police rather than investing in services or housing.
So far, more than 320 laws criminalizing homelessness have been introduced since the decision was handed down. Of that total, 260 have passed, NHLC found.
“These laws fail to address the high cost of housing, which remains the primary driver of homelessness, and instead target people who have nowhere else to go,” the report reads.
Fighting Back Is Effective: The Gloria Johnson Act
While the growth of anti-homeless legislation is concerning, NHLC’s report suggests that advocacy is the most effective tool to combat the bills.
Advocates successfully defeated 45 out of the 57 state-level anti-homeless bills that were introduced over the last 12 months, according to the report. Anti-homeless bills were also defeated in Republican-controlled legislatures like Indiana, Georgia, and Texas.
But the fight doesn’t stop when an anti-homeless bill is defeated. NHLC’s report found that advocates have been pushing lawmakers to adopt a different template bill, known as the Gloria Johnson Act, in 11 states where Cicero bills have been introduced.
The Gloria Johnson Act was named after the lead plaintiff in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case. It seeks to prohibit states from imposing civil or criminal punishments against people experiencing unsheltered homelessness when no shelter is available, protect people’s belongings from unconstitutional seizures, and revamp zoning laws to consider mobile dwellings as domiciles.
“Instead of passing the buck and placing blame on people living outside, politicians must fund housing and support, not tax cuts for billionaires and handcuffs for the poor,” the report concludes. “Homelessness will never be solved by making it illegal to live outside, because homelessness is not a legal issue.”
The Real Fix: Stop Measuring Success by Encampment Visibility
The pandemic proved that we need to rethink housing in the U.S. It also showed that aid programs work when providing agencies and service organizations with sufficient funds and clear guidance on spending aid dollars.
Contact your officials and representatives. Tell them you support keeping many of the pandemic-related aid programs in place for future use. They have proven effective at keeping people housed, which is the first step to solving homelessness.
