The study, published in May in the Policy Studies Journal, looked beyond camping bans and included laws criminalizing public drunkenness, urination, or other actions that are criminalized when conducted in public but not behind closed doors.
In some cases, the study found a quick dip in visible homelessness when laws were passed followed by a surge in homelessness that exceeded prior levels.
The authors say it is the first nationwide study examining criminalization laws and their impact on homelessness.
“The deterrence logic doesn’t hold,” says co-author Hannah Lebovits, assistant director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Lebovits says she and her co-author Andrew Sullivan, an assistant professor in the University of Central Florida’s School of Public Administration, began studying the issue after a series of anti-camping ordinances were passed in 2020 and 2021, when homeless encampments were growing across the country. Lebovits says they wanted to look specifically at the issue of deterrence, the underlying logic behind many camping ordinances.
The report found that there was a 2.2% average increase in unsheltered homelessness in cities that implemented criminalization ordinances compared with cities that did not introduce ordinances, but noted that this number is “statistically insignificant” and not evidence that ordinances are increasing homelessness.
Advocates for unhoused people, including the Housing Not Handcuffs campaign, have argued that criminalization and homeless encampment sweeps increase rates of homelessness because they can result in arrest records that make it more difficult to secure housing and because belongings, including identification and work gear, are often discarded in sweeps. Lebovits stressed that the report she co-authored did not look at these consequences, which would require a more long-term look at housing and employment.
The authors did look into whether criminalization ordinances could decrease unsheltered homelessness at the local level by pushing unhoused people into neighboring cities and counties without sanctions, but didn’t find any evidence to support this.
Homeless encampment bans are increasing
Big city mayors across the political spectrum have embraced some level of sanctions and homeless sweeps to address encampments.
This is largely because mayors have direct control over their police force, but less control over the policies that could house people. A 2021 survey of 126 mayors in 39 states found that 78% of mayors said that police have some influence over their city’s homeless policies. Meanwhile, 81% of mayors surveyed said they didn’t have much control over the issue of homelessness, though 73% said that they would be held accountable for it by their constituents. Over 40% of mayors defined success as reducing the number of people who are homeless in their city. Several mayors said their main goal was to move people along temporarily.
Public encampments popped up across the country during the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the CDC recommended against encampment clearance because congregate shelters could increase the spread of the virus.
Homelessness overall has also grown in the past few years as a result of rising housing costs, although that was briefly slowed by pandemic stimulus funding. HUD’s most recent Point in Time count found that on a single night in January 2024, 771,480 people were homeless, the highest number since the count began. That includes 274,224 people who were unsheltered.
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Grants Pass, deciding that cities could sweep homeless encampments and implement other punitive measures even if there was no shelter for homeless people to go to. The decision led to a swell of new anti-camping laws.
According to National Homelessness Law Center, in the year since Grants Pass, 260 laws criminalizing homelessness have been passed in cities across the country, most of them camping bans. And 57 state level laws criminalizing homelessness were introduced in 17 states, although only four were passed.
To stem the tide of criminalization, the National Homelessness Law Center created model legislation called the Gloria Johnson Act — named for the unhoused plaintiff in the Grants Pass case — which would make it illegal to cite or arrest someone for sleeping outside when there is nowhere else to go. It would also change zoning laws to allow more RV parking. The bill has been introduced in 11 states but has not been passed yet.
A national version of the bill was introduced in Congress by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Maxwell Frost. On June 26, elected officials and co-sponsors gathered at a press conference in Washington, D.C. to introduce the bill. “Homelessness is not a personal failure, it is a policy failure,” Rep. Jayapal said at the press conference.
In a press release ahead of the bill’s introduction, Southern Poverty Law Center CEO Maragaret Huang, CEO said, “The arguments driving these anti-camping laws and litigation are rooted in the same justifications once used to legitimize vagrancy laws, which are historically intertwined with economic and racial subordination and rely on the false idea that poverty is synonymous with criminality.”
Laws passed in the last year include an ordinance in California’s San Joaquin County that requires people sleeping outside to move at least 300 feet every hour. Violation can lead to a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.
In February of 2025, the city of Fremont, CA passed a camping ban that also made it illegal to aid or abet a homeless encampment, a law that could criminalize outreach workers, also with a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.
In May of this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom called on California cities to make encampments illegal. The governor posted a model ordinance written by his office that said that the “Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson clarified that officials can take reasonable actions to clear encampments.” Confusingly, Newsom’s model ordinance also claims that the main holding of Grants Pass is inhumane without attributing it to the Supreme Court, saying “No person should face criminal punishment for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.” The model ordinance does not lay out any specific criminal sanctions or fees for sleeping outdoors.
The Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank started by Palantir founder and billionaire Joe Lonsdale, has been pushing to criminalize homeless encampments across the country with its own model ordinance that would also penalize counties with “housing first” approaches.
Lebovits believes these types of laws are driven by the idea that “the reason why we see visible homelessness is the cities are permissive.” That means it’s important, she says, “to have a study that shows definitively that is not the case.”
This story was co-published in collaboration with Shelterforce, the only independent, non-academic publication covering the worlds of affordable housing, community development and housing justice.
This story was produced by Next City a nonprofit newsroom covering solutions for equitable cities, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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UTTERLY SHOCKING that criminalizing poverty doesn’t reduce poverty.
How can you live in the streets if you are living in jail?
Because being homeless isn’t a crime. Why should we put people in jail for not having money to pay for a place to live?
Urinating in public spaces IS a crime as is aggressive panhandling or sleeping in Store doorways.
How can you type without a brain?
Criminalizing homelessness the homeless living in jail.
How can you type without a brain?
Criminalizing homelessness [not equal to] the homeless living in jail.
No one has a right to spread filth on the streets.
Yet you MAGA folks and the ICE cowards whose boots you lick are out there doing it every day.
The homeless just need help – they just don’t know it. They don’t have the right to destroy themselves.
RUBY – like many other MAGAMORONS here, you seem to think all homeless people are either mentally ill or addicts. They’re not. Many know exactly what is going on and what they need, but people like you stop them from getting it at every attempt.
Rube – Does that then mean that you also don’t have the right to rot your brain on con social media lies?
This is classic. For their next “study” they should go with the hypothesis of whether allowing people to live on the streets and giving them handouts increases people living on the streets.
That’s not how a “hypothesis” works, Dr. Scientist. It’s a claim to be proven, not a question of what works better. Example, “I hypothesize that giving handouts will increase people living on the street. Here is how I will prove it….”
“My hypothesis is whether allowing people……” makes no sense.
Sure, a good question should be the beginning stage of forming a hypothesis, but “the hypothesis of whether” A, B or C is not academically sensible.
Oh, heaven forbid!
Here’s the hypothesis to be tested then, professor…
Allowing people to live on the streets and providing them free food will decrease homelessness!
Or, you could go with…
Allowing people to live on the streets and providing them free food will increase homelessness!
Options, right? I’m going to say going in option number 1 makes no sense, don’t you think? I think option number two has a much higher chance of being proven correct. Should we study number 1? Oh wait, we already have. It’s a big NO. And we’ve seen from experience that option 2 has happened, in real life across various cities throughout CA and elsewhere. Santa Barbara is just one of many examples.
So maybe we don’t need to study either. And that’s where I was going with my original comment, which was intended to be sarcastic/funny, rather than whatever you took it as…something quite the opposite I surmise. Typical you.
And before you lurch out from your chair with “Basic is making jokes about homeless folks”, just save it. It’s pointing a finger at the PEOPLE who make their livings “serving” and “studying” the homeless people actions, along with those who constantly support massive quantities of money drained into this. It’s not working well at all. I’m not making fun of homeless folks whatsoever. The two are totally different. I know you have absolutely zero sense of humor and simply hate everything I write, and seem to hate me as well. Hate goes nowhere for you, but you have to be you.
There you go, BASIC. Now you got it. After a google search on the term “hypothesis,” I’m sure, but nice either way to see you make an effort to learn.
B –
So jail doesn’t help but neither does housing first initiatives or harm reduction programs we’ve dump billions of dollars into.
Guess it’s time to try involuntary commitment for mental illness treatment and forced sobriety for drug users. Clearly handing out needles and crack pipes like candy hasn’t worked.
Aw cmon, give it some more time…lol
Do you have citations to show that housing first does not work? From what I’ve read, two things that work are housing first and just flat out giving people money every month.
You’ve probably read that from those who make their livings off these tax-payer funded, ill-fated attempts – as was mentioned in the article here.
SURFGOOSE – OK, so force the mentally ill and addicts into treatment. Unconstitutional, but your not the first to suggest it here.
I wonder though, what are your plans for the very large percentage of the homeless population that is neither mentally ill or addicts?
Where are you going to force people who are just poor and can’t afford anything?
Those people should be selected for communal subsidized housing that is safe and clean. Currently they’re lumped in with screaming paranoid schizophrenics and hardcore criminal junkies. They aren’t even close to the same class.
OK, both sides can find data to support their position. This is because the “homeless” population is not uniform. Those who advocate housing first know that giving shelter to the most stable of the homeless will dramatically reduce their street presence. Those who oppose that know that giving shelter to the mentally ill or addicted population will not make much of an impact. This dichotomy should be recognized in the response. The “problematic” group is the latter. We have recently passed voter approved laws that provide funding for locked care facilities to address these folks. Unfortunately the bureaucrats are fighting over that money and also trying to avoid working with these most difficult cases. Our Sheriff and BOS have given unreasonable space and money to that department that encourages arrest and “care” in custody. Our County Health Care people delayed doing anything at all for a long time and are only gingerly moving into the construction of locked care facilities in county to expand the historic void here. We need to distinguish the facilitating factors in this population and address them each differently. Liberals need to stop knee jerk reactions to locked care and conservatives need to stop knee jerk reactions to providing resources. Seems, however, unlikely.
bOtH sIdEs
This is an objective study, not advocacy.
“Liberals need to stop knee jerk reactions to locked care”
Liberals generally have *reasoned* reactions.
We need mental health care housing.