A Dangerous Push Toward Criminalizing Homelessness
By Luke Sikinyi, VP of Public Policy
The Alliance for Rights and Recovery remains deeply concerned by the continued push for punitive approaches to reducing homelessness that prioritize criminalization, forced treatment, incarceration, and surveillance over housing, healthcare, and voluntary support services. The newly released report on the Cicero Institute raises serious concerns not only about the harmful nature of these policies, but also about the possibility that some of the individuals and corporations promoting these approaches may financially benefit from increased incarceration, surveillance, detention, and policing tied to homelessness.
At a time when communities across the country are struggling with rising housing costs, increased mental health and substance use challenges, workforce shortages, and growing economic instability, the solution cannot be to arrest, jail, or forcibly institutionalize people simply because they are poor or unhoused. Policies that criminalize homelessness have repeatedly failed to reduce homelessness and instead often worsen trauma, instability, and involvement with jails, emergency rooms, and institutional systems.
It is particularly troubling to see reporting suggesting financial ties between advocates of these punitive policies and industries connected to private prisons, surveillance technology, detention infrastructure, and policing. Public policy decisions regarding homelessness, mental health, and substance use must be guided by what helps people recover and achieve stability, not by what increases profits for large corporations or politically connected interests.
The Alliance continues to believe that the most effective response to homelessness is investment in Housing First and other low-barrier supportive housing models, voluntary mental health and substance use services, peer support, crisis alternatives, employment supports, and community-based services that helps people stabilize and recover while remaining connected to their communities.
New York and the nation must move away from approaches rooted in punishment, coercion, and fear and instead invest in policies centered on dignity, housing, recovery, rights, and long-term community wellbeing.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2026
Contact: Jesse Rabinowitz
Email: media@homelesslaw.org
Phone: 757 619 8957
Groundbreaking research connects anti-homeless think tank to prisons, surveillance,
and defense contractors
Findings raise questions about venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale’s profit motives behind
his Trump-advising Cicero Institute
[Washington, D.C.] Today, the National Homelessness Law Center (NHLC) released new research that reveals the deep financial connections between the leadership of the Cicero Institute, a Trump-advising think tank pushing laws that make it a crime to be homeless across the country, and the very industries poised to profit from the same anti-homeless policies peddled by Cicero’s lobbyists. This report identifies links between Cicero, Cicero’s founder and venture-capitalist Joe Lonsdale, and the companies that profit from private prisons, surveillance, and defense contracts.
These ties are even more alarming following Trump administration’s release of new funding priorities that will make homelessness worse. The administration cites the Cicero Institute within the funding document. Its influence is seen not only in the rejection of proven solutions to homelessness but also in the focus on laws that make it a crime to sleep outside.
Click here to read our full research memo.
Here’s what we learned:
- Private Prisons: Lonsdale and Cicero have close ties to an organization aiming to operate a private “nonprofit” prison. These ties to prisons are especially concerning given Cicero’s anti-homeless policies incentivizing cities and states to incarcerate homeless people.
- Profit Motives: 8VC, Lonsdale’s venture capital firm, is invested in companies that profit from surveillance, fear, and policing, especially around Trump’s attacks on immigrants.
- Ties to Defense Contractors: Cicero’s c4 arm, Cicero Action, has lobbied for military and defense spending, activities that are disconnected from its stated mission.
In addition to these concerning investments and connections, the report includes information on Lonsdale’s massive donations to Trump and other politicians, many of whom are actively enacting the Cicero Institute’s anti-homeless agenda.
“This research should raise questions for every politician who has pushed for or backed Cicero’s anti-homeless policies” said Jesse Rabinowitz, spokesperson for NHLC. “Lawmakers and community organizations have a clear choice before them. Embrace Cicero Institute policies from which a billionaire-backed network appears poised to profit, or create safer, healthier, and more just communities by ensuring that everybody has a safe place to live and the services and support they want and need.”
Click here to see a memo that outlines these findings. The full research, prepared with publicly available information by the Public Accountability Initiative/LittleSis, is available to media on background and upon request. The National Homelessness Law Center is available to talk about the report and its implications for Cicero’s role in homelessness policy.