In October, Florida will become the latest state to ban homeless camping. Starting in January, any city that does not enforce the ban can be sued by the state, a local business or resident. "We're gonna have clean sidewalks. We're gonna have clean parks. We're gonna have safe streets," said Gov. Ron DeSantis. If there are not enough beds available in homeless shelters, the law lets cities designate temporary shelters, something former President Trump supports and has called "relocation camps." Florida is among states that has passed tougher laws on homelessness — including Kentucky and Texas — and lawmakers in about a dozen states have debated it. Most are taking guidance from the lobbying arm of a conservative Texas think tank, which aims to upend homelessness policies that have had bipartisan support for two decades, NPR reports.
The Cicero Institute was founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, whose data mining products have been used by the CIA, the U.S. immigration agency, and local police departments. He derides a "homeless industrial complex," accusing advocates of prolonging the problem so they can keep their jobs. Cicero says the common practice of Housing First — which prioritizes getting people into permanent housing without requiring them to get sober — has made the problem worse. A documentary Cicero produced blames Housing First for streets littered with needles and other drug paraphernalia. Cicero's model bill calls for shifting money away from housing, and toward substance abuse and mental health treatment. Under Florida's new law, sanctioned shelter sites would ban alcohol and illegal drugs, but offer treatment for substance abuse and mental health problems. An annual federal count found some 650,000 unhoused people on a single night in 2023, with nearly half of them sleeping outside. At the same time, drug overdose deaths last year hit 112,000. Homelessness advocates say Cicero's approach to these problems is counter-productive. "They're taking us back a decade or two into a failed homelessness policy that we've tried as a country, and it didn't work," says Diane Yentel of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.