- “Criminalization is when somebody is fined, ticketed or arrested for performing the activities that the rest of us do in private, in public spaces like sleeping and eating or simply just existing in public spaces because they have nowhere else to go.” – Anne Oliva, National Alliance to End Homelessness
- “The policies we’re going to talk about today are just incredibly damaging, incredibly painful, incredibly dangerous to the people who are living on the streets or living in shelters or living in their cars.” – Adam Murray, ICLC CEO
LOS ANGELES — At a recent Community Conversation hosted by the Inner City Law Center (ICLC), housing and civil rights advocates from across the country sharply criticized the growing criminalization of homelessness, calling it both a moral failure and a counterproductive public policy.
The virtual discussion, moderated by ICLC CEO Adam Murray, brought together national experts including Anne Oliva of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Donald H. Whitehead of the National Coalition for the Homeless, and Tricia Bauman of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. Each warned that laws punishing unhoused people for sleeping or existing in public spaces are worsening homelessness rather than solving it.
Murray opened the event by acknowledging the painful irony of the topic. “The policies we’re going to talk about today are just incredibly damaging, incredibly painful, incredibly dangerous to the people who are living on the streets or living in shelters or living in their cars,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking that we have to continue year after year to talk about these issues.”
Oliva said that as unsheltered homelessness rises nationwide, public officials face growing pressure from constituents to appear to be “doing something,” often resulting in punitive actions instead of real solutions. “Criminalization is when somebody is fined, ticketed or arrested for performing the activities that the rest of us do in private, in public spaces like sleeping and eating or simply just existing in public spaces because they have nowhere else to go,” she said.
She noted that between 2023 and 2024, unsheltered homelessness increased by 18 percent across the country, following a 12 percent increase the year before. “A strategic decision would be to make investments in supportive services and housing that people need to end their individual homelessness,” Oliva said. “But what some elected leaders are doing instead is what we generally call criminalization.”
Whitehead, whose organization has worked for decades on national homelessness policy, said criminalization is politically convenient but empirically ineffective. “Politicians were reacting to pressure from local residents,” he said. “Residents were outraged… they just didn’t want to see people on the streets of their city.”
He cited several studies showing that criminalization fails to reduce homelessness and may actually increase it. “Research tells us what they were doing was not the right thing,” he said. “Criminalization does not reduce homelessness at all. It actually increases homelessness.”
Whitehead said the policies are also expensive, diverting funds from meaningful solutions such as affordable housing. “We see all kinds of playground areas for the affluent in our community—stadiums and art facilities that regularly go up,” he said. “We just don’t see the kind of support for people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder.”
Bauman described the direct harm these laws inflict on unhoused individuals. She said her clients have lost vehicles that serve as their only form of shelter under ordinances banning sleeping in cars. “In addition to losing the shelter along with all of the property that is kept in those vehicles, they may be imposed fines for that loss,” she said. “If they attempt to get that vehicle back, that would be the case even if inside that vehicle is proof of their identity, the things that they need in order to access their medical care or other services.”
The panel also examined the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which upheld laws allowing fines or arrests of people sleeping outside even when no shelter is available. Oliva explained that the decision “basically allows jurisdictions to punish people through civil or criminal means… even when there is no shelter available.”
Bauman said that while the ruling narrowed Eighth Amendment protections, legal challenges could still be brought under the amendment’s excessive fines clause, the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable seizures, and the 14th Amendment’s due process provisions. “All of those arguments are still available along with a whole host of others,” she said, noting that state constitutions also offer potential avenues for challenge.
Whitehead said the ruling emboldened local governments to enact harsher measures. “The Grants Pass case gave permission structure to municipalities to go down this path,” he said. He pointed to laws in Kentucky that allow the use of “stand your ground” defenses against unhoused individuals and in Tennessee that make camping on public property a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. “It actually invites violence and opens the door for people to harm vulnerable people,” he said.
The panelists discussed the influence of the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank co-founded by tech investor Joe Lonsdale and billionaire Peter Thiel. Bauman described Cicero’s “model policy” encouraging states to defund permanent housing and pressure cities to enforce criminalization ordinances or risk losing state funding.
Oliva said Cicero’s influence has extended into federal housing policy. She cited a recent report that the administration plans to slash permanent housing programs in the federal Continuum of Care portfolio from 87 percent to 30 percent. “That will likely mean about 170,000 people who are formerly homeless and in permanent housing programs… will lose their housing and the supportive services that go along with it,” she said.
Whitehead warned that this trend has been reinforced by rhetoric from national leaders. He referenced the Trump administration’s July executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets,” which he said “was designed to create the narrative that homelessness was a crime.”
Oliva said federal talk of involuntary institutionalization—promoted under the same executive order—was misleading. “It is disingenuous to say that we need to ramp up involuntary commitment because there are plenty of people who are experiencing homelessness that are waiting… to be able to access services like supports for recovery, like mental health services,” she said. “Criminalization does not solve homelessness. People are still homeless after they leave a jail cell, after they leave involuntary placement. Housing is what we need to end homelessness.”
Bauman said fear of immigration enforcement has made the situation worse in Northern California. “We had fewer people coming to us for eviction defense services,” she said, noting that many immigrant families are now too afraid to appear in court. During a recent San Jose encampment sweep, she said, Spanish-speaking residents missed out on services because no bilingual outreach was conducted.
Oliva also addressed the racial dimensions of homelessness, noting that Black, Latino, LGBTQ, and disabled people are disproportionately represented among the unhoused. “They’re also the same people who are overpoliced,” she said. “Let’s say you’re fined, but you’re not going to be able to pay a fine if you’re living in a tent outside… then you get a bench warrant, and suddenly now you have a criminal record.”
Whitehead said hate crimes against unhoused people are also increasing, with more than 150 incidents recorded in a single year. “When people are criminalized… we do see a higher rate of people committing crimes against them,” he said. “It opens the door for people to treat them in a way that’s less than compassionate and dangerous in many cases.”
All three panelists concluded that the solution lies in long-term investment in housing and community-based services, not punishment. “Housing is what we need to end homelessness,” Whitehead said. Oliva called for “federal investments in affordable housing, specifically housing that is affordable to people at the lowest incomes.”
Bauman emphasized the need for local organizing and community power. “Supporting grassroots movements of people and really focusing on local infrastructure is a way that you can get involved,” she said.
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“sharply criticized the growing criminalization of homelessness”
Oh, BS. No one is trying to criminalize homelessness. That’s as much a BS talking point as the genocide mantra. What people are asking for is to criminalize crime. Enforce. Enforce. Enforce. That’s my mantra.