On April 28, a Louisiana Senate committee advanced a homelessness criminalization bill brightly titled “Streets to Success.” The legislation would make public camping a misdemeanor and funnel those convicted of violations into a “Homelessness Court Program,” the premise of which is that people living outside need treatment for substance use, mental illness or both. HB 211 came before the Senate Judiciary C Committee a week after it was advanced by the House.
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
