Greetings, I’m Yves. This article explores how the Democratic Party’s indifference towards homelessness has allowed right-wing extremists to fill the resulting policy void with their own controversial approaches.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscriber-funded television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and was a senior editor at Yes! Magazine covering race and economy. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
A recent report from the 2024 Treasury Department identified the primary driver of homelessness in the United States: “For the past two decades, rents and house prices have escalated faster than incomes across most regions.” The reasoning is straightforward: Individuals and families are earning insufficient wages to afford rent or mortgage payments, resulting in many finding themselves living in vehicles or on the streets.
However, the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank based in Texas, asserts that homelessness is a choice made by individuals seeking to benefit from publicly funded housing. Their website claims, “Permanent supportive housing doesn’t address homelessness—it creates demand for more homelessness.”
Such a statement might normally be dismissed as unrealistic. Yet, the Cicero Institute, founded by tech billionaire and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, is advocating for a bleak approach to homelessness that includes banning street camping, involuntary institutionalization for the mentally ill, and creating camps outside urban areas for those without homes. As of April 2026, the Housing Not Handcuffs campaign reports that 22 states are considering or have enacted legislation reflecting Cicero’s ideas.
Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center has criticized Cicero’s proposals as “racist, backwards, and frankly, ineffective solutions to homelessness.”
“Billionaires and politicians have fundamentally misdiagnosed the cause of homelessness,” Rabinowitz explains. “There exists a widespread but flawed belief that homelessness is a choice, that individuals opt to sleep outside, and that criminalizing homelessness will compel them to choose otherwise.”
This troubling right-wing perspective on homelessness is gaining traction in Donald Trump’s America. In a concerning 2023 campaign video, Trump decried homeless individuals as “deeply unwell” and “dangerously deranged,” claiming they disrupt the lives of working citizens and vowing to utilize every available means to “remove the homeless from our streets.”
Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis shared similar rhetoric, denying the reality that no one should be forced onto the streets due to financial constraints. He stated, “You should not be accosted by a homeless person, as we’ve seen. You should be able to walk down the street and live your life.” Rather than offering a vision of safety for all Floridians, his message illustrated a desire to render the homeless invisible, asserting, “We’re going to have clean sidewalks. We’re going to have clean parks. We’re going to have safe streets.”
Research consistently demonstrates the link between exorbitant housing costs and homelessness. “For every $100 increase in rent, homelessness rises by 9 percent,” Rabinowitz highlights. “Reflect on how many times rent has spiked by $100 in the past decade; this is why more people are finding themselves without shelter.”
Cicero’s vision is manifesting notably in Utah, where the state is constructing a 1,300-bed facility for homeless individuals on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, complete with treatment options for mental health and addiction issues. Cicero’s Devon Kurtz referred to Utah’s initiative as “a harbinger of the future.”
“The primary aim is not to impose punishment,” Kurtz stated in an NPR interview. “However,” he added, “we cannot accept the status quo.”
While the current reality reflects that individuals are being priced out of housing, those like Kurtz, Trump, and DeSantis prefer to conceal the homeless rather than tackle the systemic causes of homelessness.
To be fair, Democratic mayors and politicians have adopted similar tactics, albeit without the overtly dystopian language. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass has supported initiatives that temporarily relocate the unhoused to motels. She faces criticism from housing rights advocates for neglecting permanent solutions to the crisis. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom has enacted laws prohibiting encampments and criminalizing homelessness.
The Democratic Party’s inability to effectively address homelessness has only fueled right-wing skepticism toward permanent housing solutions that aim to alleviate inequality.
In addition to legislating camps for the unhoused, the Trump administration has severely undermined federal housing policies established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In December 2025, HUD personnel faced challenges in safeguarding unhoused individuals from severe winter conditions due to budget cuts. Trump echoed Cicero’s perspective by terminating the federal “housing first” policies that prioritize subsidized housing and addressing the needs of homeless individuals.
Despite the noble intentions of previously established federal housing policies, they have never been comprehensive enough. Rabinowitz links these shortcomings to decades of policy failures starting with former President Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of public housing.
“The solution to homelessness lies in housing and supportive services,” asserts Rabinowitz. “Since the 1980s, however, the federal government has gradually forsaken its responsibility to guarantee safe housing for all. This neglect has left cities and states to cope with the fallout from decades of inadequate federal housing policies.”
The lack of substantial upstream solutions to rising wealth inequality and housing costs continues to exacerbate the issue of homelessness, which persists as a pressing challenge.
An insightful California-based experiment illustrates this point. In collaboration with the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, the nonprofit organization Miracle Messages provided 103 unhoused individuals with $750 monthly stipends from 2022 to 2024. While recipients utilized the funds for essentials like food and transportation, the effort did not significantly impact long-term stability. Researchers concluded, “Although $750 a month is helpful, it falls far short of covering rent in high-cost regions like the Bay Area or Los Angeles.” The need for increased financial support remains evident.
“Homelessness will never be resolved until we confront the root causes, the primary one being the excessive cost of rent,” emphasizes Rabinowitz. “Housing is a proven solution to homelessness; however, the availability of affordable housing is critically insufficient.”
Rabinowitz’s organization has initiated a campaign in early 2026 aimed at preventing taxpayer dollars from supporting camps for the unhoused, such as those proposed in Utah. The “No Federal Funding for Homeless Detention Camps” initiative has gathered political backing from progressive officials and nonprofits, advocating for federal tax dollars not to fund such projects.
“Concealing the issue does not solve it,” declares Rabinowitz. “Just as you wouldn’t want your children to sweep their mess under the rug, we must not attempt to hide homelessness.”
