Joe Lonsdale's Think Tank Drafted the Homeless Camping Bans. Eight States Passed Them.

The bills criminalizing homelessness in state after state did not start in the statehouses. Many trace to one Texas think tank, the Cicero Institute, founded by billionaire Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

Cicero writes model legislation, ready-made bills that lawmakers can introduce as their own. Its homelessness model does two things at once. It bans sleeping or camping in public, and it moves money away from permanent housing toward mandatory addiction and mental health treatment.

How one model bill reached eight states

The bill travels. Elements of Cicero’s model have been introduced in at least 15 states and passed in eight, including Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Utah, according to the National Homelessness Law Center. Missouri passed a version too, until its state Supreme Court struck it down.

The wider trend tracks the same direction. By early 2025, 32 states had passed or strengthened anti-camping laws, and hundreds of cities followed.

From the Supreme Court to the White House

The Supreme Court opened the door. In June 2024, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a 6-3 majority ruled that cities can punish people for sleeping outside even where no shelter beds exist. Camping bans that lower courts had blocked as cruel and unusual became enforceable overnight.

Then it went national. On July 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14321, which ended the federal priority on Housing First, pushed civil commitment for people with mental illness, and steered HUD grants toward cities that enforce camping bans. That is the core of Cicero’s model, now written into federal policy.

Courts have called it unlawful

The pushback has been bipartisan on the bench. A Trump-appointed federal judge in Rhode Island, Mary McElroy, called HUD’s funding overhaul a “slapdash imposition of political whims” and ruled it unlawful. In April 2026, a federal appeals court agreed, warning the change would be “immediately destabilizing and disastrous.”

For now, courts have blocked the worst of the HUD shift. The model bills in the states have not been touched.

Who Joe Lonsdale is

Lonsdale’s reach runs well past one think tank. He co-founded the surveillance contractor Palantir, runs the venture firm 8VC, and has built institutions including the University of Austin. In June 2026, WIRED reported he was among the affiliates listed in “Dialog,” the secretive invitation-only network founded by Peter Thiel for figures in tech, finance, and government.

The pattern is institution-building aimed at policy. Cicero held its first national homelessness summit in Washington in June 2026, the same month its model was reshaping federal rules.

What actually reduces homelessness

The approach runs against the research. The National Alliance to End Homelessness and decades of studies find that Housing First, giving people stable housing before requiring treatment, reduces homelessness and costs less than the cycle of shelters, jails, and emergency rooms. A citation does not produce a home. It produces a record that makes housing and work harder to get.

The scale is not abstract. A record 771,480 people were homeless on a single night in the latest federal count, and family homelessness jumped 39 percent in a year. Camping bans do not shrink that number. They move it out of sight.

What you can do now

Check for a Cicero-style bill in your state. The model language travels under local sponsors. Ask your state legislators whether a camping-ban or treatment-diversion bill is moving, and tell them to fund housing, not citations. Find them at openstates.org.
Defend Housing First funding. Trump’s order steers HUD money away from permanent housing. Call your U.S. House member and senators at the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and tell them to protect Housing First and oppose tying homelessness grants to camping-ban enforcement. Use the letter below.
Support the groups fighting it in court. Democracy Forward and the National Homelessness Law Center are litigating the HUD changes and tracking the state bills. The April 2026 rulings came out of that work.
Submit public comment locally. When your city or state shifts its homelessness plan toward enforcement, continuums of care take public input. Show up for housing over handcuffs.