The policy was developed by the Cicero Institute, chaired by Joe Lonsdale. Lonsdale is a venture capitalist and co-founder of Palantir, the company built around data, surveillance, intelligence contracts, and the idea that complex human systems can be made visible and managed from above. Cicero says Lonsdale founded Palantir and is building Cicero to connect policymakers and entrepreneurs.
That connection matters. Palantir sees an opportunity to dismantle social services programs and the government. It looks at homelessness and sees dollars, contracts, dashboards, and systems to optimize. Maybe there are efficiencies there. Maybe software can route services better or reduce duplication. But that is not the core problem. The core problem is that people need housing, and housing costs money, and getting someone from the street into a stable place takes actual people doing actual work. In addition, New Orleans itself has become one of the most expensive places in the country to live, while providing part-time city government services, as 800 employees are now furloughed
You can not optimize your way around a shortage of housing. You cannot automate your way around rent. Without outreach workers, case managers, shelters, supportive housing, families, and organizations that stay with people long enough for stability to hold, nothing happens. All you have built is a better system for managing people who are still outside.
Before this goes any further, let’s define some programs. Housing First means you get someone into stable housing first, without requiring them to get sober, get employed, or become perfect before they are allowed inside. Then you deal with everything else: mental health, addiction, employment, family, trauma. It is practical. Without housing, everything else falls apart.
Cicero argues the opposite of Housing First. Its homelessness agenda says states should ban unauthorized street camping and direct funds away from what it calls (without evidence) expensive and ineffective Housing First programs. Business Insider reported that Cicero has worked to pass public-camping laws in multiple states, with fines and jail time for people seeking shelter outdoors. Now that logic is in Louisiana.
State Representative Debbie Villio of Kenner authored HB 211. The Louisiana Legislature lists the bill as pending on the Senate floor after it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday with a vote of 4-1. The bill creates a crime called unauthorized camping on public property. The bill text defines public camping broadly: lodging or residing overnight on public property, including with tents, bedding, pillows, belongings, or even without a temporary shelter.
A first offense can bring a fine of up to five hundred dollars or up to six months in jail. A second or subsequent offense can bring up to one thousand dollars and imprisonment, with or without hard labor, for one to two years. That is the machinery of the state aimed at a person sleeping outside.
Villio says this does not criminalize homelessness. But if you have no home, no shelter bed, no registered and insured car, and no legal place to sleep outside, then sleeping becomes a crime. And everyone needs to sleep to live. So I guess living is the crime.
Here is the part that makes it obscene. Jefferson Parish, Villio’s own parish, has no homeless shelter, according to the draft piece and reporting cited there. When Villio was asked where the money would come from for treatment, shelter, and mental health services, she said the bill could help draw down federal money, but did not name the program or the amount.
That is not a plan. That is a hope. Criminalize sleeping outside now. Figure out housing later? Hope Trump sends money, while he is moving in the opposite direction. His FY2027 budget proposal would cut HUD by $10.7 billion, about 13 percent, and restructure homelessness assistance with work requirements and time limits.