Criminalizing Homelessness Won’t Fix It
Something fundamentally troubling is happening in how we’re approaching homelessness in America, and we’re not talking about it enough. While wealthy cities grapple with rising numbers of unhoused people on streets, state governments are rushing to pass laws that criminalize the very condition of being without a home. It’s a strategy that sounds tough. It feels like action. And it will almost certainly make everything worse.
According to HUD’s 2025 report on homelessness, we’re facing a roughly 27 percent increase in homelessness since 2013, with over 745,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night. That figure should alarm us. But the response unfolding across Republican states right now isn’t to expand housing or services. It’s to expand something far more punitive. President Trump’s executive order signed over a year ago opened the door for states to pursue “civil commitment” of homeless individuals, and lawmakers are sprinting through it.
Utah approved more than 43 million dollars this year partly to target what officials call “high utilizers” those who cycle repeatedly through shelters and jail. Louisiana passed HB 211, the “Streets to Success Act,” which makes it a crime to sleep or camp on public property, with first-time offenders facing fines up to 500 dollars or up to six months in jail. Indiana passed similar legislation. What makes this particularly striking is the cheerleading from some officials. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry defended the homeless courts as a way to start “removing the homeless off our streets and into the places that they belong.” The message is clear: we’re moving from treating homelessness as a housing crisis to treating it as a crime problem.
Here’s what the data tells us though. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, about 30 percent of those experiencing chronic homelessness have a serious mental illness. Two-thirds have a substance use disorder or other chronic health condition. These are vulnerable populations with complex needs. Laws that threaten jail time don’t address those needs. They bypass them.
The alternative to this approach has been working, quietly and with bipartisan support for over two decades. Housing First, initially adopted as national federal strategy in 2004 by President George W. Bush’s administration, simply offers people stable housing without preconditions like sobriety or compliance with treatment. Wraparound services like mental health care and substance abuse treatment come after people are stably housed. The evidence from cities and states that have pursued this approach is compelling: housing stability leads to better health outcomes and lower utilization of emergency services.
But now the Trump administration has signaled a dramatic shift. HUD’s 2026 budget cut available funds for permanent supportive housing from about 3 billion dollars in 2024 to 2.4 billion dollars, while shifting 1.3 billion dollars to temporary, transitional housing programs. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has warned that this reallocation could push roughly 97,000 people out of permanent supportive housing.
Twenty-one state attorneys general and the National Alliance to End Homelessness have sued HUD over these changes, with one lawsuit already succeeding in April. But the administration’s HUD Secretary Scott Turner calls such concerns “fear mongering,” insisting these moves provide more flexibility and funding than ever before.
We need to be honest about what’s happening here. Criminalization doesn’t cure mental illness or addiction. It doesn’t create affordable housing. It doesn’t address the structural factors that funnel people into homelessness in the first place. What it does is burden already stretched court systems, jail facilities, and communities with the expense of enforcing a policy that’s essentially treating poverty as a crime.
Shaina Bessonet, a dental hygienist in Louisiana who experienced homelessness from January 2022 to March 2026, testified against HB 211, saying simply, “It’s not fixing the problem, it’s making it worse.” She’s right. We’ve tried the punitive approach for decades. We know where it leads. We also know what works. The question is whether we’re willing to invest in solutions rather than symptoms. Go beyond the headlines…
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