The billionaire-backed think tank that wants to change harm reduction and homeless policy

It all started with screaming.

Joe Lonsdale told The Washington Post that his wife and toddler were harassed by a group of homeless people as they walked in downtown San Francisco. They “screamed at her and the child as they fled.” 

In another version of the story, it was just one person. “She just got screamed at, multiple times,” Lonsdale told The New York Times, “and threatened by someone who has clearly lost their mind.”

However it went down, the incident played a role in the billionaire’s departure from California and helped make homelessness his pet project.

Lonsdale, co-founder of weapons tech company Palantir (at the moment, he’s worth $4 billion), has used his vast resources to launch the Cicero Institute, a think tank and lobbying firm based in Austin, Texas.

Cicero has played a major role in getting laws that ban camping passed in 16 states and has helped shape Trump administration policies – most notably President Trump’s Executive Order 14321, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which calls for an end to policies promoting housing first and harm reduction.

In memos addressed to leaders in 22 states, including Ohio, Cicero told leaders they must follow Trump’s executive order. The memo is not a legal document, but the think tank wishes to press state leaders to get on board.

Cicero contends that we can arrest our way out of the housing crisis, and that states must enforce laws “prohibiting open drug use, urban squatting, camping, and loitering.” They seek statewide camping bans, reductions in barriers to civil commitments (including moving from 72 hours to up to 60 days for holding), limits on using hotels as stop-gap housing, requirements that homeless individuals register with the state to receive “homelessness assistance,” and a “treatment-first” approach.

They assert that state and federal governments have spent billions while ignoring “root causes” of homelessness and that housing first is a failed policy. But the United States is chock full of confident billionaires pushing their own agendas, each of whom stands aglow with the belief in their own infallibility – 989 of them, in fact.

In truth, a person should not have to be in recovery to access housing when lack of housing could be the “root cause” of a person’s mental health or substance use struggles. And there’s evidence that robustly funded housing first programs do work. A HUD/VA partnership has helped reduce veteran homelessness by more than half.  Besides, the history of involuntary commitment in this country, lest we forget, is a horror show. 

There is another way that centers human rights. Fund community-based programs. We can start small. Make it easier for people to get new identifications and social security cards. Create more low-barrier shelters. Offer ready access to golden standard medication-assisted treatment, and incentivize more pharmacies and physicians (especially in rural areas) to support it.

And it bears repeating that not every person who is unhoused has a substance use disorder, a mental illness, or is a menace to society. But sleeping outside can exacerbate any behavior – and it can increase risks and likelihood of overdose death.

What is it, then? Is it the sight of unkempt human beings? Is it the frustration of seeing someone struggling? Certainly, having someone yell at you in the streets is unnerving, especially if you’re with a small child. 

Trotting out failed policies from the past, like forced institutionalization, is not the answer. Nor is moving resources away from what’s working.

In George Orwell’s 1931 essay “The Spike” he describes a group of “tramps,” or wandering unhoused people, spread out on a lawn. He immerses himself among them and writes, ironically, that this group “defiled” the landscape, these unkempt and unwashed beings.

And yet, he describes the system that they have been pressed into, one that fosters a kind of hamster wheel of misery. “Tramps” could not stay in one “spike,” or shelter, for more than one night at a time. And they had to keep moving because they would be harassed if they stayed in one place. Every spike was demeaning. Residents could not not keep money. They could not smoke. They could not read. And they were fed watered down tea with two slices of bread.

These people were reduced to bodies. Moved about. Hidden. Shuttled from one hiding place to another.

And yet, they are human. They are people, even if they are screaming.