Democratic Congress Members Call on Biden To Fight Criminalization of Homelessness

Amid rising national homelessness, four Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Thursday expressing their “deep concerns” about the national trend toward criminalizing unhoused people and calling on the administration to address the issue.

The request comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could allow cities to ticket and arrest homeless people for sleeping outdoors even when there is no other available shelter. The issue has become a growing point of focus as visible homeless encampments have increased across the country since the pandemic.

To “solve” the problem, local governments have increasingly relied on policing, often through passing camping bans and by coordinating police-led “sweeps” to disperse homeless encampments, and the Congress members noted federal agencies have recently been accused of misconduct as well. 

“There is a troubling pattern of increased violence against unhoused people at the hands of federal agencies,” the Congress members wrote in the letter, which was shared with Motherboard. 

In the letter, Democratic Reps. Cori Bush, Barbara Lee, Jim McGovern and Robert Scott called on the president to increase funding for homeless services, substance abuse treatment and “community-driven alternatives”; free up more federal funding to house homeless people by altering restrictions on federal funding; and track federal law enforcement interactions with unhoused people.

The recommendations, the House members said, were far preferable than the growing push to treat the homeless as criminals that should be punished. 

“Criminalizing homelessness and using law enforcement to punish the unhoused is not only the most expensive and least effective way of addressing the problem, but this approach also creates arrest records, fines, and fees that stand in the way of people in transition securing jobs or affordable housing and discourage organizations that provide support to the unhoused,” they wrote. 

The four House members, who are all part of the body’s poverty task force, suggested the president should use his 2025 budget to tackle the problem head on, saying the “federal government must permanently end the unhoused crisis.” They also urged the president to implement federal protections for community-based organizations who are criminalized for feeding homeless people. (In Houston, for example, volunteers with Food Not Bombs racked up $23,500 in fines over six months last year for offering food to unhoused people in violation of a city law.) 

“As someone who experienced homelessness during a difficult point in my own life, I find it shameful and disgraceful that homelessness is criminalized instead of being treated as what it is—a policy failure,” Lee told Motherboard in an email. “Amid a threat from SCOTUS to worsen the problem, President Biden has an opportunity to invest in effective, humane solutions to this crisis.”

The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness decried the criminalization trend in 2022. And the Biden administration has said publicly that its HUD funding would “provide communities with the resources and tools to respond to homeless encampments humanely and effectively while avoiding approaches that criminalize homelessness.” In 2022, Biden introduced a set of proposals to address unsheltered homelessness and laid out the “bold goal” of reducing homelessness by 25 percent by 2025. That same year, HUD also announced millions of dollars in grants for housing vouchers specifically targeted to unsheltered homelessness. 

The funding has not been enough to stop many people’s drive toward homelessness. Overall, homelessness increased 12 percent between 2022 and 2023—and to the highest total number since at least 2008—a result of both rising housing costs and the end of pandemic era rental assistance and eviction moratoria.

At the local level, politicians have pushed draconian laws as the number of homeless people has increased. As of 2019, three fourths of cities had anti-camping laws, according to the nonprofit National Homelessness Law Center. Last week, Kentucky’s House of Representatives passed a bill that would authorize “deadly physical force” for someone camping on private property who is trying to “dispossess” a property owner of their property. The bill will next move to the state senate.

Such tactics have historically been deployed by cities, but the country has seen more states introduce similar ideas at the state level; since 2021, 15 states have introduced bills that would criminalize homelessness, and in four states those bills have become law, according to the National Homelessness Law Center. 

In their letter, the Congress members argue federal law enforcement, over which the president wields more influence, also shares blame for the problem. They cite the May 2023 shooting of Brooks Roberts by the U.S. Forest Services during a raid at Payette National Forest. Roberts, who was already in a wheelchair, was shot repeatedly and became permanently paralyzed during an operation coordinated with the Bureau of Land Management. 

According to a lawsuit, Roberts was “needlessly and recklessly” shot after he “wheeled out in his wheelchair to find what appeared to be his brother being carjacked or robbed.” In reality, Roberts’ brother was being arrested for illegally parking the family’s mobile home on federal land. In body camera footage, Roberts, who approached officers with a revolver, can be seen telling the officers he did not know they were cops.