Yves here. This article describes how Democratic Parry’s lack of interest in tackling homelessness has created a policy vacuum that right-wing extremists have happily seized upon.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. He is the creator, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscription-based television and radio program that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica. His books include Talking About Abolition: A World Without Police Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Standing Up: The Power of Narrative in the Pursuit of Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). He is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and was a senior editor at Yes! A magazine that covers race and economy. She serves as co-director of the non-profit organization Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-director of the Bleeding in Afghanistan. He also sits on the board of directors of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Produced by An Economy for Alla project of the Independent Media Institute
A 2024 Treasury Department report identified the leading cause of homelessness in the United States: “Over the past two decades, tax rates and housing have been rising faster than incomes in every state in the United States.” The logic of this statement—based on written evidence—is straightforward. People don’t make enough money to pay their rent or mortgage, and they end up living in cars or on the streets.
But, at the Cicero Institute, a Texas-based think tank, people choose not to be homeless so they can take advantage of subsidized housing. According to Cicero’s website, “Permanent supportive housing does not address homelessness – it creates the need for more homelessness.”
Such a claim can be derided as a truism. Except that Cicero, created by tech billionaire and Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, advocates a dystopian solution to homelessness that includes banning street camping, involuntary housing for the mentally ill, and building camps outside of cities for the homeless. According to the Housing Not Handcuffs campaign, as of April 2026, 22 states across the country are considering or passing legislation based on Cicero’s ideas.
Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center has harsh words for Cicero’s policies, calling them “racist, retrograde, and frankly, ineffective solutions to homelessness that focus on jails and arrests and forcing people off the streets.”
Rabinowitz says: “Billionaires and politicians have mistakenly seen the cause of homelessness. “There is a mistaken but pervasive belief that homelessness is a choice, that people choose to sleep outside, and that if we criminalize homelessness and make it difficult to be homeless, people will choose something else.”
This dangerous right wing idea of dealing with homelessness is gaining ground in Donald Trump’s America. The president, in a disturbing 2023 campaign video, criticized the homeless as “very unhealthy” and “very confused” who destroy the quality of life of working people and promised to use all tools to “get the homeless off our streets.”
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis echoed the language. Instead of admitting that no one should be put on the street because they don’t have money to rent, he said, “You shouldn’t be bothered by a homeless person as we see, you should be able to walk on the street and live your life.” Instead of promising all Floridians the ability to live safely, he instead offered a vision of a county where the homeless disappear: “We’re going to have clean streets. We’re going to have clean parks. We’re going to have safe streets.”
Study after study proves the obvious—that when housing becomes more expensive, people can’t afford it. “Every time rents go up by $100, homelessness goes up by 9 percent,” Rabinowitz explained. “People should think back. How many times in the last ten years has the rent gone up by $100? That’s why so many people are sleeping outside without a place to stay.”
Cicero’s vision is most evident in Utah, where state authorities are building a 1,300-bed homeless camp on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, complete with indoor facilities to force people into mental health and addiction treatment. Cicero’s Devon Kurtz called Utah’s experiment “futuristic.”
“The ultimate goal is not to punish,” Kurtz said in an NPR interview. “But,” he added, “there are situations where we cannot accept the status quo.”
The status quo is that people are being priced out of their homes, but rather than solving the root causes of homelessness, Kurtz, Trump, DeSantis, and other conservatives want to avoid seeing the homeless, to punish them for falling through the cracks of the modern American economy.
To be fair, liberal mayors and Democratic politicians have also adopted similar approaches minus the overt dystopian propaganda. For example, in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass has supported a program that pushes homeless people into motels as temporary housing. He has drawn criticism from housing rights groups for failing to support permanent housing solutions and address the root causes of homelessness. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom has instituted restrictions on camping and criminalized homelessness.
The failure of democratic politicians to effectively address homelessness has led to the derision of permanent residency and other proven solutions based on addressing inequality.
In addition to federal bills to enforce the undocumented, the Trump administration has violated long-standing federal housing policies established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In December 2025, as HUD workers struggle to keep homeless people safe in harsh winter conditions, their funding is cut. Trump took a page right out of Cicero’s book in ending federal “housing first” policies that emphasize subsidized housing and meeting the needs of the homeless.
As fair as pre-Trump housing policies were, they were not comprehensive enough. Rabinowitz traces the failure of federal housing policy to former President Ronald Reagan’s crackdown on public housing.
“We know that the solution to homelessness is housing and services,” said Rabinowitz. “At the same time, since at least the 1980s, the federal government has abdicated its duty to ensure that everyone has a safe place to live.
Because downstream solutions such as subsidized housing and other government services do not go far enough, and because there is no political will to implement upstream solutions to rising wealth inequality and housing costs, homelessness continues to be a major problem.
A recent California-based experiment sheds light on this. As part of a partnership between the non-profit organization Miracle Messages and the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, 103 homeless people were given $750 a month between 2022 and 2024. Recipients of this basic income spend it on necessities such as food, transportation, and housing costs. But, after a year, the funding did not significantly change the long-term results. The researchers concluded, “While $750 a month is helpful, it doesn’t come close to paying rent in more expensive places like the Bay Area or Los Angeles.” The solution is more money, not less.
“We’re not going to solve homelessness until we fix the underlying factors, number one of which is that rent is too high,” Rabinowitz said. “We know that housing solves homelessness [affordable housing] walking around,” he added.
Rabinowitz’s organization has launched an effort as early as 2026 to prevent tax dollars from funding homeless camps, as Utah does. The “No Federal Funding for Homeless Detention Camps” campaign has used the political support of progressive elected officials and nonprofits to demand that federal tax dollars not go to such projects.
“Hiding the problem doesn’t solve the problem,” said Rabinowitz. “Just like you wouldn’t want your kids to sweep their crumbs under the mug, we don’t want to hide homelessness.”
