Housing Not Handcuffs: Fighting Against the Criminalization of People Experiencing Homelessness
State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and the National Homelessness Law Center tackled how to effectively fight back against the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness. This strategic conversation outlined the billionaire interests behind these attacks, specific state campaigns to learn from, and the best messaging, stories, policies, and organizing partners to effectively fight back.
Across the country, state and national policymakers are advancing laws that criminalize people experiencing homelessness — penalizing basic acts of survival such as sleeping in public, resting, or seeking shelter when no alternatives exist. These criminalization laws are tied to The Cicero Institute, a think-tank funded by Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of tech surveillance giant Palantir– and tied to larger authoritarian tactics threatening all of our freedoms.
These laws specifically target communities over-represented in homelessness due to long-standing structural inequities: Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities, LGBTQ+ youth, survivors of domestic violence, people with disabilities, low-income communities, and people in rural areas. All together, they divide our communities, worsen the affordability crisis, and as noted, threaten all of our freedoms.
And now, the Trump administration is adding fuel to the fire by supporting laws that make it a crime to be homeless. Utah has proposed a plan to create a 1,300-bed government-run detention camp where people will be held against their wills. Now more than ever we must fight back against laws that make it a crime to be poor, sick, and disabled as we continue to fight for housing justice.
Check out the National Homelessness Law Center’s Housing Not Handcuffs campaign and their Policy Hub, along with these resources:
- Top Five Ways Criminalization of Homelessness Harms Communities, Housing Not Handcuffs
- Alternatives to Arrests and Police Responses to Homelessness, Urban Institute
- Encampment Principles & Best Practices, Housing Not Handcuffs and National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
- Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness, National Health Care for the Homeless Council
SiX's Economic Justice Initiative team organizes and equips state legislators in-and-across all 50 states towards building economies that empower workers, consumers, and local businesses. Our mission is grounded in the belief that our government and economy can work for, with, and by all people — not just billionaires and corporate CEOs. We believe that fair wages, healthcare, housing, education, childcare, and retirement are basic human rights, and that a healthy economy should deliver these guarantees. Worker power, tax justice, and affordability are the core pillars of our work. We advance our goals through individualized policy support, peer-to-peer legislator learning, cross-state organizing, education and training, research, communications, and convenings. Join Us.