Thank you for the powerful insight. As usual, the Supreme Court made things much worse, in Johnson v. Grants Pass, their decision from 2024 permitting (encouraging!) the outlawing of homeless people even when there is nowhere else to go. That was a reversal of some previous laws.
From June 27, 2026 "It’s Been Two Years Since the Supreme Court Made Homelessness a Crime. The Result Speaks for Itself."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/06/supreme-court-homeless-crime-grants-pass-trump.html Note the connection to the surveillance state and the privatization of prison profits. (Bold/emphasis added. The whole article is worth a read.)
Two years ago this week, in the landmark Johnson v. Grants Pass decision, the Supreme Court gave cities and states the green light to make it a crime to sleep outside, even when there is nowhere else for people to go. ...
The increase in anti-homeless laws and rhetoric is not an accident; it is the result of a well-funded and coordinated campaign orchestrated in part by the Cicero Institute. The Cicero Institute, to put it simply, is the Heritage Foundation of homelessness. They leverage their relative anonymity and billionaire funders to pass cookie-cutter laws in states across the country that make it a crime to be homeless. Most recently, the Cicero Institute supported a Louisiana law that not only makes it a crime to sleep outside, but also paves the way to push homeless people into forced treatment and unpaid labor. Cicero also supports Utah’s plan to create a remote, government-run facility that will hold up to 1,300 people experiencing homelessness. And while these laws hurt us all, they hurt Black, brown, queer, immigrant, Indigenous, and disabled communities first and worst.
The Cicero Institute’s attacks on our unhoused neighbors are not just ideologically driven; there is also a clear profit motive. Recently, we at the National Homelessness Law Center published new research that shows Cicero and their founder—Palantir co-founder and investor Joe Lonsdale—have connections to the private prison industry and financial ties to industries poised to profit from the criminalization of homelessness.
For more about the decision:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-uphold-laws-targeting-homelessness-with-criminal-penalties/
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