Touted by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office (SFSO) as “California’s first law enforcement-led crisis stabilization center,” RESET holds people who’ve just been arrested for public intoxication or being under the influence of a controlled substance. They are detained until staff give them a certificate declaring that they’re able to care for themselves, after which they can voluntarily stay for up to 23 hours. Earlier in 2026, an internal city memo obtained by Mission Local warned that RESET carries a “very high legal risk” of being classified as a jail or a detention facility.

The facility is located in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, and only accepts detainees from District 6, which also includes the Tenderloin. Black residents comprise less than 10 percent of the population in those neighborhoods, while white residents comprise a little over 27 percent. But at publication time the dashboard shows that a little over half of the 984 detainees admitted so far were white, and a little over one-quarter were Black, meaning Black people are being the most disproportionately detained.

RESET is located directly across from the primary intake facility for the county jail system, and San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto has stated that RESET’s benefits include “easing the strain on our jails.” But a litany of conditions make many detainees ineligible for RESET, including the administration of Narcan, active warrants, psychiatric criteria, and possession of controlled substances and/or personal property above a certain threshold.

According to a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report published in June, 95 percent of people “held in the SFSO jail are charged with felony crimes, while typical misdemeanor-only arrestees without warrants are booked and released within a day or so, many before they are assigned a bed.” RESET’s existence may encourage officers to arrest people they might otherwise have left alone.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved RESET in early 2026 by a vote of 9-2. Both the supervisors who voted against expressed concerns that there wouldn’t be any tangible way to measure the impact of the center.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Take a sneak peek into the #RESETCenter. And take a look at the #sfsheriff new online public dashboard- which has real-time insights into admissions, outcomes, and how the program is helping individuals in crisis while allowing law enforcement officers to get… pic.twitter.com/ajqPvmhAER

— SF Sheriff’s Office (@SheriffSF) July 8, 2026

RESET represents the city’s first performance-based contract for services related to public health and homelessness. This doesn’t refer to how RESET impacts the city, but to how much the city pays to Connections Health Solutions, the Arizona-based for-profit contractor operating the program. Connections is receiving a flat monthly rate between $528,339 and $657,018 during 2026, after which the rate will be $555,797, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. But it can make up to an additional 12.5 percent by hitting certain performance metrics, including linking more than 30 percent of detainees to services and keeping the officer drop-off time under eight minutes. Data show it takes approximately five minutes for officers to turn someone over to RESET staff and return to their other duties.

Cops in San Francisco as well as elsewhere in California are more likely to stop Black residents over outstanding warrants compared to white residents. Black residents have significantly more prior arrests and convictions than their white counterparts due to this long history of unequal stops and biased enforcement. They are also more likely than whites to be referred to involuntary psychiatric holds, carceral practices rooted in longstanding clinical-racial bias.

Citywide, Black residents comprise only around 5 percent of the population; white residents, around 37 percent.

San Francisco was redlined in 1937, with immigrant neighborhoods like SoMA graded “hazardous” to justify mortgage denials and economic underinvestment. This legacy continues today. An April civil rights complaint filed by the SOMA West Neighborhood Association alleges that the city treats the area as a “containment zone” for poverty, while protecting the city’s wealthy West Side neighborhoods.

In 2024, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors formally apologized to Black residents for “systemic and structural discrimination” and “targeted acts of violence,” committing to the “rectification and redress of past policies and misdeeds.” Yet earlier in 2026 as the city was getting ready to launch RESET, it cut $57 million from the Department of Public Health budget—gutting harm reduction and HIV services, and vital programs serving Black, Brown and trans communities.

A “jail-alternative” like RESET is yet just another arm of criminalization and surveillance targeting Black residents.

Image via San Francisco Sheriff’s Office/X

The post New Public Dashboard for SF’s “Law Enforcement-Led” RESET Center appeared first on Filter.

Four different people stepped up and offered to let me stay at their place, for free, but all four of their addresses were rejected. Within 1,000 feet of a school, a church, a park. One was rejected because of an HOA.

Finally I found an “efficiency apartment” complex in Nashville that was known for renting to people on the registry. The address would be approved, if I could pay $1,600 up front and another $800 after I was released, for first and last month’s rent and the security deposit. That was two-and-a-half years of prison wages. But I was desperate to get out of the hellhole that is prison.

That apartment complex wasn’t a great place to live, but I was in the free world with a roof over my head. So I was truly thankful for that. In time I found a job and began to make friends with people who felt the same way about the system as I did.

“It’s not one issue, it’s everything stacked together—mental health, substance use, incarceration, low wages, rising costs. It builds until something breaks,” said my coworker Sabrina Westmoreland, who used to be an outreach worker in Los Angeles. “And when it does, we don’t respond with care—we respond with punishment. Laws. Tickets. Pushing people out of sight like that solves anything. It doesn’t.”

My friend Tom, who’s also on the registry, had been living on the street. I was able to help him get into the apartment complex. But he was struggling with drug use, and without the proper support he soon lost the apartment. The last time I saw Tom he was living on the street again, with a GPS monitor on his ankle. 

“We’re living in a time where housing is treated as a privilege instead of a right,” Westmoreland said. “And that belief that people deserve or don’t deserve a place to live based on how much money they make—that’s a moral failure.”

We’ve all seen people standing on street corners, holding cardboard signs that say: Anything helps. And we’ve all looked away, at least some of the time.

A nonprofit ministry called People Loving Nashville did outreach to the apartment complex, and through them I met so many wonderful people.

“Being seen is everything,” Lindsey Smith, People Loving Nashville’s community connections manager, told Filter. “That’s why I try—at the very least—to acknowledge people standing on corners. A wave. Eye contact. Something.”

One day I was sitting in my truck when an older woman walked up to me, trying to sell a worn-out bungee cord. It wasn’t worth anything, but I gave her two dollars for it. I had an unopened six-pack of Shiner Bock—the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation allows me to consume alcohol in moderation—so I asked if she wanted to drink one with me.

Her face changed instantly. She smiled—wide, real. I don’t think it was just about the beer. It was like she was smiling to be recognized as a human being, not as a problem to avoid, or as a quick transaction at a stop sign. Like she existed to someone, even if just for a moment. We sat on the tailgate and shared that beer. That moment stayed with me. 

We’ve all seen people standing on street corners, holding cardboard signs that say: Anything helps. And we’ve all looked away, at least some of the time. But now that I’m navigating life on the sex offender registry, I understand how important that wave or moment of eye contact really is. It’s why I looked forward to People Loving Nashville knocking on my door every Thursday. Even if it was just for the next few minutes, I knew I was going to be seen.

Image (cropped) via City of Wichita

The post The Sex Offender Registry Changed How I See Homelessness appeared first on Filter.

In 2021 Cicero produced a model bill, which legislators across the country have copy-pasted to become law, that calls for expanding the criminalization, surveillance and incarceration of people who live on public land. Cicero is the brainchild of Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, who has written at length about his entrepreneurial interest in the “successful, beneficial prison.” In the lead-up to the summit, Housing Not Handcuffs published a memo highlighting the institute’s financial ties to industries that profit from its carceral agenda.

Cicero’s model bill criminalizes public camping as a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one month in jail and a $5,000 fine. It coerces unhoused people into so-called structured camping facilities, state-run sites that could include forced psychiatric and/or substance use treatment as well as mandatory drug testing, with carceral or financial penalties for “failing.” Cicero has also been a loud opponent of Housing First, the permanent supportive housing approach without preconditions like abstinence. The model bill proposes to redirect funding from Housing First to “treatment first” models and unhoused detention camps. Cicero-inspired legislation has been enacted in 10 states.

The summit also follows the Louisiana Senate’s passage of HB 211, arguably one of the harshest such bills in the country. This Cicero bill would force unhoused people to “choose” between incarceration in jail or involuntary treatment. If they can’t afford the cost of that treatment, they may be forced to perform unpaid labor.

Housing First had a 20-year run and $4 billion a year. The federal government just killed it.

This will change homelessness in every city in America – including yours.

Housing First activists sued over the last attempt at major reform. But this time, they’ll have an uphill… pic.twitter.com/ACRYTq1iMm

— Cicero Institute (@InstituteCicero) June 3, 2026

The new research brief from Housing Now Handcuffs highlights Lonsdale’s ties to an organization called Social Purpose Corrections. While SPC is billed as a nonprofit, Lonsdale’s vision includes profitability.

“Believe it or not, not everyone involved in prison policy thinks profit is dishonorable,” the tech billionaire and Trump campaign donor wrote in a 2024 blog post, “certainly not myself.” 

The brief also details how Lonsdale’s venture capital firm, 8VC, invests in various companies that profit from tech surveillance, prisons and policing, including from Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Through 8VC, Lonsdale also backs Citizen, an app that turns neighbors into vigilantes to report suspected crimes—often falsely. The brief shows Lonsdale’s connection to Gothams LLC, a company profiting from immigration detention facilities in Texas and Florida.

“That’s really what this is always about: the money,” Antonia Fasanelli, executive director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told the crowd at the June 5 protest. “This is not a policy debate about how to end homelessness. This is someone who plans or intends or maybe stands to get rich off of the lives of unhoused people.”

Lonsdale’s dystopian vision is gaining ever-deeper traction within the Trump regime. On June 4, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee released their 2027 funding priorities, which will almost certainly exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said that the GOP bill, which slashes funding for public housing by $1.3 billion, will “put hundreds of thousands of low-income households at risk of eviction.” 

NEW REPORT Research has found that the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank pushing anti-homeless laws, has deep connections to the prison and surveillance industries, and may stand to profit from the same anti-homeless laws they advocate for. https://t.co/Eo5iMGdV1e

— National Homelessness Law Center (@homeless_law) June 3, 2026

Cicero’s influence in that bill is apparent. The think tank’s fingerprints are also all over Trump’s 2025 anti-unhoused executive order. In 2024 as SCOTUS considered Johnson v. Grants Pass, Cicero submitted an amicus brief in support of cities criminalizing people sleeping outside. 

After a Cicero-inspired law was enacted in Kentucky, 178 people were charged with unlawful camping in just one county alone.

“In Kentucky, we’ve seen the dangerous legislation of the Cicero Institute incarcerate our people every day,” VOCAL-KY executive director Shameka Parrish-Wright told the protesters gathered June 5. “We know that generations … will be impacted by bad legislation and the things that groups like Cicero Institute are pushing.”

Donald Whitehead, representing the National Coalition for the Homeless, told the crowd that Cicero’s policy platform was an “old American pattern,” recalling how Jim Crow-era vagrancy laws targeted Black people “for being poor, unemployed or simply unhoused,” so that they could be “funneled into convict leasing and forced labor” that “powered local and state economies.”

“We can’t ignore that today’s policymakers once again are trying to make human survival a crime and call it public policy,” Whitehead said.

Image (cropped) via Arizona Judicial Branch

Correction, June 8: A previous version of this article misstated Donald Whitehead’s last name.

The post Protests as Cicero Institute Launches Homelessness Policy Summit appeared first on Filter.

Convictions could be penalized with up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $500. The bill originally proposed incarceration for up to two years on subsequent convictions, but this was removed during the Senate committee review.

Modeled after coercive drug courts, the Homelessness Court Program purports to offer eligible defendants the so-called choice of treatment plus 12 months of probation as an alternative to incarceration—and charge them for the costs of their participation. If they can’t pay, a judge could waive the costs; attempt to assign them to a publicly funded treatment program; or force them into unpaid labor to work off the debt.

“‘Streets to Success?’” Jesse Rabinowitz, Campaign and Communications Director at the National Homelessness Law Center, told Filter. “That’s not success, that’s Jim Crow … they’re not really interested in getting people help, they’re using the unhoused to build more camps, to normalize forced labor. [That’s] authoritarianism.” 

Rabinowitz likened the bill to forced prison labor, which remains legal in Louisiana.

If a participant “fails” treatment, a judge could extend their probation even longer, or impose a new sentence, or send them into the state’s “intensive incarceration” for six months—after which they return to the Homelessness Court Program.

“I have no idea where they would get the money,” Rabinowitz said. “It’s so out of touch when more and more people are struggling to afford housing.”

“Cicero has been lobbying states all over the country.”

“Streets to Success” is being promoted by the Cicero Institute, the right-wing think tank behind the proliferation of public camping bans and other anti-homelessness legislation across the United States.

“Cicero has been lobbying states all over the country,” Rabinowitz said. “And you have right-wing governors trying to appease the Trump administration … it’s all connected. They’re not interested in addressing things. Not in making housing affordable. They’re making more people homeless that they then want to force into detention camps.” 

In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which pressed for the forced institutionalization of unhoused people. The order explicitly rejected the evidence-based “Housing First” approach, which recognizes the ineffectiveness of requiring preconditions like abstinence or employment. Rabinowitz pointed out that we do need more behavioral health care services across the country, but that local governments are following the Trump administration’s lead by defunding them.

“Trump is hell-bent on making it worse,” Rabinowitz said. “We need to fight for a country where everybody, regardless of where they’re from, what they do, what they look like, who they love—they’ve got a safe place to call home.”

The bill is currently with the Legislative Bureau. Melanie Bray, director of legal programs and advocacy for Disability Rights Louisiana, is fairly certain it will pass; the state has a long history of warehousing its most vulnerable residents. Bray recalled that in 2025 when New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl, unhoused people were “rounded up like cattle” and temporarily sequestered in a warehouse. 

“What gets lost is the human component,” Bray told Filter. “The loud part is, ‘This is a problem for business, it’s about fentanyl addiction, crime, property prices.’ What’s pushed aside is the human component—the people sleeping in the street.”

During the committee hearing, bill sponsor Rep. Debbie Villio (R) claimed that “external pressure”  offers unhoused people the option to break the cycle of criminalization.

“Quite frankly, I believe and others believe that it’s cruel to allow these people to not provide them the tools to help themselves,” Villio said, according to Nola.com. “And we’re dealing with the population sometimes that doesn’t want the tools.”

Image (cropped) via Washington State House Republicans

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“He hasn’t stopped talking about it for the past 24+ hrs,” the account added. “It is the single most traumatizing thing that’s happened to him in nyc.”

The post went viral, generating 5.8 million views and fueling cycles of online outrage. Many of the initial responses derided the couple as whiny weaklings who should move to the suburbs (or “i hate you both. you should be put in the town stocks.”) Others—including progressive-minded writers like Jill Filipovic and Mindy Isser—voiced frustration at what they saw as the left’s counterproductive downplaying of such incidents. Right-wing accounts duly accused “woke” progressives of turning cities into hellscapes; the forced institutionalization of people who are unhoused or use drugs in public came up more than once.

Though the moment may have registered only for the extremely online, its running themes—many people’s fear or disgust at witnessing poverty, drug use or mental illness, and the resulting politicized crackdowns to “clean up” cities—have been percolating and shaping culture and policy for decades.

Social media tales should be taken with large grains of salt. This incident allegedly took place on a crowded train, and although the story went viral, no corroboration from other witnesses is readily visible.

Only 973 public restrooms are operational in New York City, in a population of 8.6 million. Over 350,000 people are unhoused.

But if the story is true—if an unhoused woman boarded a train and relieved herself—it reflects, among other things, a lack of suitable places to do so.

There are very few public restrooms in New York and most other cities in the United States. Research suggests that US cities have, on average, 13 public restrooms per 100,000 residents. And in big cities the number is lower: 10 restrooms per 100,000 residents. Many US cities experiencing homelessness crises do even worse: Philadelphia has only 4.1 public restrooms per 100,000. Houston and Dallas, respectively, have 7.7 and 4.4. That’s far behind much of Europe, for instance.

According to an analysis by the New York City Council, there are 1,064 public restrooms across all five boroughs. Only 973 are operational, in a population of 8.6 million. Over 350,000 people are unhoused in the city, including thousands sleeping unsheltered. They all have to go to the bathroom somewhere.

To Harvey Molotch, emeritus professor of sociology at New York York University with a specialization in urban development, it’s a familiar problem.

“Since the beginning of urban development, the first formations of towns and cities, a primary issue is: Where are people going to go?” he told Filter.

“The notion that crowding causes disease after mass pandemics … it’s brought to a head in the 19th century,” Dr. Molotch added. “There’s a confluence of factors: urbanization, population density, disease and early notions of what causes communicable disease.”

According to Bryant Simon, professor of history at Temple University, there was a nationwide effort to build public bathrooms from the late 19th century through to the First World War. “Mayors of each city would show up and host events where they would be bragging about their public restrooms, and it is such a stark comparison to what we have now,” he wrote. The temperance movement also lobbied for public toilets—they hoped access to outdoor bathrooms would keep people out of the saloons, where they might be tempted to imbibe.

“You have a classic moral panic. Fear of disease, fear of crime. And sex. There’s a fear people are shooting up in restrooms.”

Building on this momentum, another 2 million public bathrooms were built across the US as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs. But by the 1970s and ‘80s, cities across the country started closing public bathrooms, driven by sentiments that would be a comfortable fit on today’s social media.

“You have a classic moral panic,” Molotch said. “Fear of disease, fear of crime. And sex. Drug use. Any disorder in general. It’s a time of the breakout of sexual freedom—heterosexual, homosexual—and drug use. So … there’s a fear people are shooting up in restrooms.”

At the same time as depriving unhoused people of safe spaces to relieve themselves, officials cracked down on public urination. Budget cuts dovetailed with the perception that a city public bathroom was an undesirable and dangerous place: A functional, safe, clean toilet requires regular cleaning and oversight.

“To have a functioning restroom you need to invest a good amount of money and invest in maintaining them,” Molotch said. “Otherwise it becomes a humiliating disaster, where the bathroom becomes dirtier and dirtier.”

Molotch is scathing about the attitudes that have left the country with completely inadequate provision. “It’s American selfishness and unwillingness to invest in the public realm,” he said. “It’s disregard for the homeless and their earthly needs. You put it all together in a martini shaker and the outcome is there’s nowhere to go. For anyone.”

“We know people do use public restrooms as consumption spaces, so we have to increase options for folks and use the spaces to inform people of their options.”

Of course public bathrooms are also places where people, particularly those without housing, may seek to use drugs privately, and that can pose issues—in terms of the safety of a person using drugs alone, and also for bathroom attendants who might discover someone overdosing or dead. But that’s a reason to mitigate the risks, as some have already sought to do—not to deny people an essential resource.

“There are a variety of options,” Trevor Goodyear, assistant professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia, told Filter. “First, we know people do use public restrooms as consumption spaces, so we have to increase options for folks and use the spaces to inform people of their options in terms of safer consumption sites.”

Dr. Goodyear suggested building public toilets with motion censors. “So if someone stops moving, you can have someone check in.” Other low-cost, low-tech features he mentioned include cubicle doors that swing outwards—so an unconscious person wouldn’t block access—rather than inwards. And often, it’s very simple: “Have staff routinely check bathrooms, just a quick knock on the door, ask, ‘Are you ok?”

Building facilities with more space would also help, he said. “That way people aren’t falling and getting wedged between the toilet and wall, which could be a problem.”

“And these innovations benefit everyone, not just people who use drugs,” Goodyear pointed out. “Everyone could use a clean, safe bathroom.”

The post Lack of Public Bathrooms Makes Cities More Hostile appeared first on Filter.

The DOJ will be able to designate VA lawyers as special assistant United States attorneys, which gives them the authority to initiate guardianship proceedings in court. 

“Guardianship and conservatorship are among the most extreme legal interventions that can be imposed on a person,” the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund stated March 12. “They can strip individuals of the right to make their own medical decisions, control their finances and direct their own lives. These are not routine protective measures—they are sweeping losses of civil rights that are notoriously difficult to reverse.”

The agencies claim the highly unusual collaboration is meant to “help some of America’s most vulnerable Veterans get the ongoing care they need.” But funneling those veterans into guardianships is yet another mechanism that the Trump administration has created in service of the 2025 executive order calling for disabled people who live outside to be removed from public view. The DOJ/VA announcements obliquely acknowledge that the population the MOU applies to “includes some Veterans who are either homeless or at risk of homelessness.”

“I am possibly headed to be one of these veterans at risk, and my ex-husband is already there,” Army veteran and trauma coach Angela Peacock told Filter. “With no next of kin or family support, many in my generation could easily land ourselves in a position like this.”

Following deployment in Iraq, Peacock had a nightmarish experience of seeking trauma support through the VA system and being overly medicated with psychiatric drugs. Today, she guides others seeking relief from similar heavy medication cocktails on how their prescriptions can be safely reduced or discontinued.

“It is true that veterans without family or support who can’t make their own medical or financial decisions need help doing so,” she said. But “prolonged institutionalization can contribute to persistent depressive symptoms and diminished agency.”

The DOJ and VA are using the legal tool of guardianship to tackle a longstanding issue: veterans receiving inpatient care for complex physical and mental health conditions, especially those who lack family or appointed healthcare proxies, often languish in VA facilities with no clear path to discharge.

The special attorneys who will be assigned to these cases do not represent the veterans, but rather the VA and DOJ, whose stated goal per the MOU is to “ensure the efficient use of VA medical resources.” This creates a conflict: in their most vulnerable moments, veterans may depend on government attorneys who could view guardianship primarily as a means to free up hospital beds, rather than as a last resort.

The agencies are “sidestepping the law … through a process riddled with conflicts of interest,” House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano (D) stated March 11. “VA should not be both the caregiver responsible for veteran’s wellbeing and the legal driver of stripping veterans of their rights.”

 

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Unhoused veterans, particularly those who are physically disabled, have long described the labyrinthine journey they were forced to take when attempting to access stable housing. On Reddit threads discussing the MOU, many posts expressed fears of predatory guardianship and a state-sponsored grab of their benefits. 

“Imagine being wards of the VA and having to do whatever they want,” a Redditor identifying as a Navy veteran posted in the r/VeteransBenefits subreddit March 11. “No choice on whether you are going to take that pill or not. Basically become government property all over again.” 

“As a former homeless vet, and with the way things are going, possibly homeless again in the next year, this is absolutely terrifying,” another Redditor wrote March 12. 

Some pointed out how housing, mental health care and food banks have previously been deemed too expensive to fund, yet somehow a forced guardianship program is feasible. Others predicted that the guardianships will inevitably be outsourced to private contractors who will choose the veterans’ housing while they “accept and invest the compensation payments on [their] behalf.”

A member of the U.S Army W.T.F! Moments public Facebook group summed up the prevailing mood about the MOU: “What’s the worst way this can be used against veterans? That’s the question everyone should ask.”

Veterans’ service organizations have practical solutions to the problem that the federal government intends to bludgeon with guardianship. In a March 13 statement, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) called on Congress to pass the End Veteran Homelessness Act of 2025 (HR 1957), which rather than removing rights from the most vulnerable veterans would provide them with case managers to help them navigate the housing system.

One day after the DOJ/VA announcement, ProPublica dropped a bombshell report on an exodus of VA mental health care providers, hundreds of whom have left since President Donald Trump began his second term. The regime has similarly slashed protections for veterans who are unhoused or at risk of losing their housing.

“They’ll get them off the streets and put them into housing (camps), and declare the homeless veterans crisis over,” another Redditor posted March 11. “Will anyone actually be helped? Probably not, they just don’t want to see the homeless vets anymore.”

Image via Department of Veterans Affairs

The post DOJ, VA to Take Legal Guardianship of Unhoused Veterans for “Ongoing Care” appeared first on Filter.

LACDPH announced the news March 10 with the publication of its latest annual report, which covers data from 2015 through 2024. The death data for LA’s housing crisis have broadly followed the same trajectory as national overdose mortality: increasing dramatically at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, leveling off through 2022 and 2023, and decreasing in 2024. (LACDPH does not yet have data for 2025, but for national overdose mortality the sharp decrease seems to be leveling off.)

Despite the recent turnaround, county residents without housing are dying at a rate 46 times greater than that of the general LA population. About 40 percent of these deaths are attributed to overdose.

LACDPH makes six recommendations for strategies to further reduce overdose deaths among people experiencing homelessness, referred to in the report as PEH: harm reduction-friendly housing options; lower-barrier entry to treatment, for those eligible but not receiving it; expanded outreach services; accessible medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD); peer services; and lastly policy changes to make “the continuum of substance use-related services more accessible” to people without stable housing—specifically, overdose prevention centers as well as MOUD access during incarceration and upon re-entry.

Fentanyl-involved deaths for this population decreased, from 70 percent of the overdose deaths in 2023 to 59 percent in 2024. But deaths in which methamphetamine was the only drug detected increased, from 19 percent to 27 percent. The authors noted that meth-only deaths were “more common among older PEH” Which would also make sense in the context that the over-65 demographic was the only group whose overdose mortality did not decrease in 2024.

After drug overdose, the second leading cause of death continues to be coronary heart disease (CHD). In 2024 the CHD rate decreased overall, and among both Black and white demographics—but it increased among those identifying as Latino/e (the term used by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in its “Point in Time” surveys, which is where the LACDPH’s demographic data come from). All-cause mortality also decreased among both Black and white people—but held steady among Latino/e people. And the 21-percent drop in overdose mortality was not evenly experienced across Black, white and Latino/e groups—their respective decreases were 29 percent, 28 percent and 11 percent. 

All of which may help contextualize the graph below. Of all substances currently associated with the overdose crisis, meth is the most conducive to getting overcounted.

The report comes against a backdrop of the Trump administration systematically defunding providers that support “Housing First,” the evidence-based approach of offering housing services to everyone who needs them—rather than considering people ineligible if they’re currently using drugs, or imposing other preconditions that are discriminatory or unrealistic for someone who doesn’t already have stable housing.

LACDPH Director Dr. Barbra Ferrer wrote in the report’s introductory message that the agency is “currently facing major reductions in federal and state resources,” with a projected shortfall of $323 million for the coming year. Though at no point in the 70-page report does anyone use the term “Housing First,” LACDPH does call for “harm reduction, overdose prevention and substance use treatment services [to be] readily accessible to people in all permanent and interim housing settings,” as well as for people to “not lose their housing due to substance use.”

Though LACDPH makes continuous references to the importance of centering people with lived experience—“inviting [them] into the planning process and treating their insights as essential”—it’s not immediately clear whether the report itself was created with input from anyone currently homeless. The authors are very consistent in describing people currently experiencing homelessness as “PEH,” but switch to “lived experience” when describing the people who should get a seat at the table. And at one point the report states that its recommendations were developed in collaboration with various local agencies, community providers and advocates, “and formerly homeless individuals.” The LACDPH did not respond to Filter’s short-notice inquiry.

Top image (cropped) via United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research/Russ Allison Loar/Creative Commons 4.0. Inset graphics via Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

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On December 17, 2025, Phoenix City Council voted 8-1 to approve the ban. The ordinance makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to sell or exchange syringes, distribute harm reduction kits or hold events for the purpose of providing medical care in parks without prior city approval. It was due to take effect on March 30. But on March 3, the council accepted a request to push it back to June 1.

District 7 Councilmember Anna Hernandez was the only vote in opposition to the original ordinance. “The foundational issue here is that we do not have enough shelter space or housing for folks to live and folks don’t have health care access,” she told local media outlet CALÓ News in February. “So mixing those two things together and now making a barrier for these providers to provide that care, I think is going to be detrimental to this community.”

“They are consistently pointing to neighbors who have logged complaints about litter, medical supplies and discarded syringes.”

Shot in the Dark (SITD), a Phoenix-based volunteer harm reduction provider, has opposed the ban from the start. Member Brian Thoi explained how SITD does mostly outdoor distribution. They don’t have a fixed office location, so the volunteers set up folding tables or tents in places that are easily accessible to people in need, handing out supplies and receiving used supplies.

“We’re trying to get some concrete answers from the city,” Thoi told Filter. “They are consistently pointing to neighbors who have logged complaints about litter, medical supplies and discarded syringes in the parks, as well as feeling uncomfortable being in the presence of medical services provided to people in the park.”

Distribution of sterile syringes, naloxone, fentanyl test strips and other supplies by harm reduction organizations was only authorized in Arizona by a 2021 bill. State law allows cities, counties and private organizations to “establish and operate a prevention program,” with requirements that they provide safe needle disposal, syringes in “sufficient” quantities to prevent reusing or sharing, referrals to substance use treatment and mental health care by request, and education on overdose prevention, peer recovery and prevention of bloodborne disease.

Several state and local organizations have come out against the Phoenix ban. The ACLU of Arizona put out a call to action, inviting supporters to urge the city council to vote no on the ordinance. After it passed, the ACLU condemned the result.

“Outreach in parks is often people’s first, and only link to detox, treatment, or housing,” said Darrell Hill, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona, in a statement. “By targeting healthcare and aid workers trained to meet people where they are, the city is eliminating one of the most effective pathways into recovery.”

As Thoi explained, the council initially passed the ordinance with a 90-day delay, and a council member added an instruction to city staff to research policy issues and potential legal conflicts created by the ban. Confirmation of the new delay to June 1 means, Thoi said, “We are looking at the next few months to engage deeper into advocacy with city council and staff.”

“Participants have maybe interpreted it to mean harm reduction services are banned throughout the city. People have been letting us know they won’t be going out to our sites any more.”

Though the ban is not yet in place, Thoi stressed that it is already harming his organization’s work and the people they serve.

“It’s taking time and energy away from running our programs and services and being put instead into engaging with city staff,” he said. “What we’ve been seeing from a lot of our participants is they’ve heard the reporting on this, and maybe interpreted it to mean harm reduction services are banned throughout the city of Phoenix.”

That confusion has severe consequences. “People have been contacting our info line and letting us know they won’t be going out to our sites any more,” Thoi said, “because they have heard we have been banned or they’re not expecting us to be there.”

“If you want to make a permit system for having events in the park, and don’t want to give me a permit, that’s one thing,” he added. “But to ban harm reduction as a solution to these issues, I wonder what the knock-on effects of this will be. Are we going to see other cities take on these sorts of bans that will affect our work in other parts of the Valley?”

The ban is the latest Phoenix action targeting people experiencing homelessness, in the wake of the 2024 Supreme Court Grants Pass decision, which ruled that city and state governments have the constitutional right to evict people from outdoor encampments even if no shelter beds are available. The city council voted in May 2024 to ban camping within 500 feet of schools, public parks and other locations.

“It will lead to more overdose in the parks, and more 911 calls of people passed out or even dead.”

Based on Phoenix’s January 2025 point-in-time count, homelessness increased 3 percent from 2024-2025, largely driven by an increase in people living unsheltered (up 28 percent). The Maricopa Association of Governments noted that federal funding meanwhile expired for 1,000 shelter beds in the region, as rental costs increased and access to elder care and mental health care services remained limited.

Phoenix has seen a slight downtick in overdose deaths. According to Maricopa County data, deaths decreased 3.5 percent from 2023-2024, but were still higher than in 2020. Restricting vulnerable people’s access to harm reduction resources and referrals threatens this slow progress.

The impending parks ban has also activated other providers. Claudia McCormick-Vargas, a volunteer with Street Medicine, leads outreach in city parks with students from Arizona State University to deliver pet food to unhoused pet owners.

“We asked our students, is there a need, can we help?” she told Filter. “They told us they often see homeless people with their pets at harm reduction clinics on Friday afternoons. That’s how we started helping out. I started to see all the good work that both our students and the harm reduction group Shot in the Dark was doing with our homeless population. I thought it was great that our students were providing medical care and SITD was providing harm reduction supplies.”

The ban, she said, “will have a big impact. These are volunteers that have built a presence and relationships meeting homeless people where they’re at. People trust them and look for them. If this ordinance goes through I don’t see how it will be helpful with the homeless population in our parks. It will lead to more overdose in the parks, and more 911 calls of people passed out or even dead.”

Living on the street can be dangerous anywhere. But in Phoenix, brutal summer heat can kill in a matter of hours. The past several years have seen record high temperatures, with hundreds of heat-related deaths recorded in summer 2025. The climate crisis cruelly intersects with both homelessness and drug use: An estimated 40 percent of deaths were of unhoused people, and two thirds of cases involved drug use.

“Some of the needs I’ve seen are just basic hygiene and water,” McCormick-Vargas said. Despite being asked for it, “We’re not allowed to bring food. Some of the needs I see are for needles, condoms or lighters. In the summer people need to keep their electrolytes up if they’re outside.”

“We’re not going to let ourselves be pushed out of our community just because of some nosy neighbors.”

Thoi said that if the ban ultimately takes effect, his organization will have to adapt in ways that could expose volunteers and the people they serve to more risk.

“The reality is, even though it would be sad for us to be excluded from the parks, we will continue to operate as we have in the past,” he said. “We will just be subject to being in places that aren’t as safe. We’ll be in canal paths and vacant lots instead of a well-lit, maintained place that’s accessible to public transit and for people with disabilities. We’ll be pushed further out into the margins to places where maybe it’s dangerous for our participants and volunteers to operate.”

They’re sure of one thing, however: “We’re not going to let ourselves be pushed out of our community just because of some nosy neighbors.”

Photograph via City of Phoenix

The post Impending Parks Ban Looms Over Phoenix Harm Reduction Efforts appeared first on Filter.

Senate Bill 1205 was introduced November 26, and is scheduled for a hearing in early February 2026. If passed, it would declare an emergency and take effect July 1, 2026.

Residents “may submit a written claim for compensation” if they live in a qualifying city that has bans targeting street-homelessness but declines—whether by law or informal “practice”—to enforce them. Bans on any of the following would qualify: “illegal public camping”; “obstructing public thoroughfare”; “loitering”; “panhandling”; “public urination or defecation”; “public consumption of alcoholic beverages”; “possession or use of illegal substances”; or “shoplifting.”

The bill then appears to moot all of that, stating that a city could also qualify as long as it “maintains a public nuisance.” 

Property owners could submit claims for reimbursement if they demonstrated that they’d expended personal funds “to mitigate the effects” of the city’s underenforcement. They could also submit claims for an amount equal to what they’d lost in property value as a result of the “public nuisance”; there’s no indication of how this would be measured.

If their claim were rejected or they didn’t receive a response within 30 days, they could challenge the decision in district court. If approved, the maximum payout would be whatever the claimant paid in primary property tax for the past year. In Oklahoma, this would be in the ballpark of $1,500. If someone believed they were owed more, however, they could file a claim for the remaining amount the following year, and keep repeating each year if necessary.

Lastly, the property would have to be located in a municipality with a population over 130,000. Currently there are three Oklahoma cities with populations large enough to qualify: Oklahoma City has about 720,400 residents, Tulsa has about 415,500 and Norman has around 131,700. 

After the Supreme Court’s 2024 Grants Pass decision, Oklahoma enacted a state-wide public camping ban.

State and local legislators have been increasingly frustrated that the law doesn’t allow street-homeless residents to be targeted outright.

In 2015, Oklahoma City proposed a ban on “standing, sitting or staying on any portion of a median either less than thirty feet wide or located less than two hundred feet from an intersection,” which the chief of police explained in slideshow that was originally titled “Panhandler Presentation” before being changed to “Median Safety Presentation.” The ordinance was enacted, then struck down by a federal appeals court in 2020.

In 2024, the Supreme Court’s Johnson v. Grants Pass decision upheld the criminalization of homelessness even when no shelter beds are available. In the wake of that decision, Oklahoma enacted a state-wide public camping ban. Oklahoma City and Tulsa only have shelter beds for about two out of three residents sleeping outside.

The camping ban has gotten off to a slow start, with local law enforcement unclear on whether various state-owned lands fell under city versus county jurisdiction. The Frontier reported that due to the law’s phrasing and conflict with local ordinances, the Oklahoma City Police Department and the Norman Police Department weren’t enforcing the ban, except for inside a state-owned wilderness park in Norman due to a local ordinance there that didn’t cover the rest of the city.

Meanwhile some county sheriffs’ offices weren’t enforcing the ban because people weren’t camping in the areas under their jurisdiction. However, Tulsa officials were pressured to begin crackdowns, and according to the Frontier at least 58 people have been arrested for violating the city-specific camping ordinance since November 2024.

SB 1205 specifically proposes to measure population size not according to current estimates or projections for 2026, but “according to the latest Federal Decennial Census,” which as the name suggests is conducted once every 10 years. The latest Federal Decennial Census is from 2020, and states that the population of Norman is 128,026. A different population cutoff, or more current source of data, might prompt less confusion.

Image via San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria

The post Oklahoma Bill Proposes Reimbursing Homeowners for Nearby Homelessness appeared first on Filter.

The complaint was filed November 25 in the federal District of Rhode Island, and represents attorneys general for 18 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Trump’s executive order expanded civil commitment and directed HUD to abandon its “Housing First” approach—meaning it should only fund programs that require abstinence or otherwise impose barriers that keep vulnerable people out of stable housing. The department has since begun to do that, making a series of changes that ultimately prompted the new legal complaint. The plaintiffs allege that the changes “essentially guarantee that tens of thousands of formerly homeless individuals and families will be evicted back into homelessness.”

Around 90 percent of CoC funds are allocated for permanent housing, in accordance with the Housing First model. But earlier in November CoC cut that down to 30 percent, as well as adding “Geographic Discrimination Conditions” to make grants more competitive for applicants in jurisdictions that aren’t openly hostile to unhoused residents. CoC also prohibited funding for housing dedicated to or inclusive of transgender residents, or for any housing services that don’t support the myth of a gender binary.

CoC evaluates applications using a points system, which the “Geographic Discrimination Conditions” impact substantially. Points are awarded to applicants located in jurisdictions that enforce bans on public drug use and public camping. Enforcement of civil commitment and surveillance of residents on sex offender registries are weighted in the selection process as well.

The complaint alleges that the gender-based criteria are unlawful. CoC is subject to an “Equal Access” regulation that requires housing and other services be made available to residents according to their gender identity. The regulation is currently still in effect.

Trans and gender-diverse people, people who use drugs and people on sex offender registries are already systemically disenfranchised from housing.

“Congress designed this program in recognition that homelessness is a crisis that requires immediate stabilization and continuing support to reverse,” stated Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, one of the three AG leading the coalition. “These changes are designed to trap people in poverty and then punish them for being poor.”

Among the other people quoted in Brown’s announcement was a Washington resident who described how after leaving a domestic violence situation they spent the next five years moving between shelters, cars and other forms of homelessness.

“My son spent his early childhood in that reality while I tried to navigate his disabilities and a maze of systems that made us constantly prove we deserved help,” they stated. “Getting housing was a huge relief, but functioning didn’t come back overnight. It took more than a year before I could manage daily routines or feel safe again. That’s why wraparound services matter—they are the bridge between ‘not dying’ and actually living.”

Four days before the complaint was filed, the same federal district court issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from effectively shuttering the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency Case, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. All four agencies were targeted for defunding under a March executive order, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” 

Top image (cropped) via City of Tucson. Inset graphic via United States Congress.

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