1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Stop criminalizing homelessness and start funding real housing solutions. Two years after Johnson v. Grants Pass gave cities the green light to punish people for sleeping outside, over 350 cities and 11 states have passed anti-homelessness laws — not one of which creates a single unit of affordable housing. Sweeps destroy people's medications, IDs, and work equipment. They don't end homelessness. They just move it. The Cicero Institute, bankrolled by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and connected to the private prison industry, is writing these cookie-cutter criminalization laws across the country. Louisiana is now criminalizing outdoor sleeping and enabling forced unpaid labor. Utah is planning a remote government facility to hold up to 1,300 homeless people. This is not a housing policy. It is punishment for poverty. Housing vouchers work. I've watched clients reconnect with family, stabilize their health, and rebuild their lives when they got one. The housing crisis is what drives homelessness — and until you address that, arresting people for having nowhere to go is just cruelty dressed up as policy. Oppose any legislation that criminalizes homelessness without a corresponding, fully funded commitment to affordable housing.