How homeless advocacy became the plaything of reckless radicals

In 2018, Grants Pass, Oregon, was providing homeless shelters in tandem with a city ordinance that prohibited camping on public property. This generous policy mix for a town of just 39,000 was a compassionate compromise that both protected vulnerable people and the enjoyment of public spaces by everyone else. But a corrosive national movement that effectively promotes rather than prevents homelessness thought otherwise. They sued Grants Pass, seeking to overturn the camping prohibition.

In his 2021 book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, journalist Michael Shellenberger chronicled the damage inflicted by what he called the “homeless industrial complex.” The funding and radical agendas of the NGOs running this war against civil society is the subject of Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homeless Advocacy. The new report from the Capital Research Center was produced in cooperation with the Discovery Institute.

The Grants Pass camping prohibition was ultimately upheld in 2024, but only after City of Grants Pass v. Johnson had wound its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That positive outcome aside, the case was important for another reason, as explained in Infiltrated:

While the case began as a local dispute in Oregon, it quickly grew into a national referendum on how American society chooses to respond to homelessness. What made Grants Pass remarkable for our purposes was the sheer scale of non-profit mobilization: hundreds of groups—many organized as 501(c)(3) charities—filed amicus briefs, making it one of the most heavily lobbied homelessness cases in U.S. history. Collectively, these amici reported more than $9.1 billion in revenue, underscoring that this debate is not only about ideology but also about the immense resources flowing through the sector. [emphasis original]

Those NGOs that stood against Grants Pass’s policies form the backbone of the research for Infiltrated. The Capital Research Center investigated who they are and exposed their often-radical agendas.

The report also explored where the $9.1 billion in annual revenue comes from. Almost a third of the total, $2.9 billion, was from government grants. This is literally your money (if you’ve been paying your taxes) that is funding a rich and radical movement that opposed a very modest law enforcement role in keeping order in Oregon.

Compare those billions to the projected budget for the city of Grants Pass, which anticipates $155.6 million in new revenue for 2025.[i] The town might have eventually won the lawsuit, but this wasn’t a fair fight.

It’s not unreasonable to expect a visit from the members of the homeless industrial complex if your town passes sensible homeless policies.

One example of the NGOs that opposed the camping prohibition in Grants Pass was the National Harm Reduction Coalition (NHRC). In its most recent IRS filing, NHRC reported $12.8 million in revenue, with more than $9.4 million of the total (73 percent) credited to “government grants.”

What else did you get for your money?

Harm Reduction

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“Harm Reduction” doesn’t reduce suffering—it spreads the “harm” to the rest of us.

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Infiltrated explains that NHRC is “among the most prominent promoters” of the so-called “Harm Reduction” policy.

Harm Reduction is best described as an anti-responsibility approach to homelessness. According to Infiltrated, “Harm Reduction emphasizes minimizing the harm of drug use rather than requiring abstinence or treatment before receiving services.”

What may appear to be a bad idea in principle grows far worse when the Harm Reduction NGOs explain what it means:

[The National Harm Reduction Coalition] accepts drug abuse “for better or worse” and tells those struggling with addiction that “no one knows what’s best for you better than you. Whatever drugs you use, we want you to be safe and healthy.” It supports calls to defund the police and claims that “racism drives both homelessness and health inequities,” including the “inhumane” Grants Pass decision.

It’s wrong to assume that everyone who is homeless is struggling with serious mental health and substance abuse issues. But the general stereotype is otherwise valid. There is a well-known correlation between all of them. Only a fool would dismiss the high probability that these correlations also equal causation.

The homeless population would be far smaller if many and perhaps most of those enduring it were cajoled and (when necessary) forced into psychiatric and substance abuse treatment. Any reasonably large collection of Americans knows this because they’ve lived through it with a close friend or family member—or know someone who has.

This is true for at least two of us at the Capital Research Center: an adult son in one case, and a mother in another. What prevented our loved ones from becoming homeless was the aggressive intervention of their families, not inane policies hiding behind corrupt euphemisms such as “Harm Reduction.”

The aforementioned son wasn’t diagnosed with his schizophrenia until he resurfaced after vanishing and refusing to speak to his family for nearly a year. The disappearance began in early 2021, during the pandemic restrictions, which vastly complicated any effort to find him.

Whether or not he was homeless at any point in that ordeal may never be known. His delusions were that serious. But if he had been intercepted by the police in Grants Pass or anywhere else for “public camping,” then the likelihood of him being returned far sooner, and in less mental peril, would have gone up substantially. Among other benefits, the Grants Pass camping prohibition is how a humane civilization gets vulnerable people back to those who most want to help them.

It was some time after his son resurfaced and endured the first of two involuntary hospitalizations that his father came face to face with the so-called “Harm Reduction” thinking.

Some of the son’s psychiatric staff were excellent, but others not so much. The difference was most pronounced when the son began to resist his anti-psychotic medication. Hearing the complaints for the third time during a pandemic-inflicted Zoom call check-up, his doctor advised: “You’re an adult, so if you won’t take your medication, then that’s your choice.”

Thanks doc!

The son stopped taking the medication. Six weeks later, and just days before Christmas, he began harming himself and wildly ranting about an alien invasion. With no help from his obtuse doctor, another involuntary commitment and forced medication slowly restored some mild sanity. Despite, or perhaps because of, his delusions, the young man either didn’t realize or didn’t want to act upon the option of simply disappearing again.

He could have easily added to the nation’s exploding homeless problem.

The National Harm Reduction Coalition and its “Harm Reduction” apostles may tell such people that “no one knows what’s best for you better than you.” But people suffering from serious mental illnesses and addictions do not. They don’t know they’re sick, won’t believe it, and often do not want the help they desperately need.

To tell them otherwise is to promote these problems, not mitigate them. The name aside, “harm” is actually increased and spread to the rest of us by “Harm Reduction,” not reducing the suffering.

Housing Justice

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“California epitomizes the failings of this approach,” we write in Infiltrated. “After the state mandated all funding flow exclusively to Housing First programs (2015–2019), unsheltered homelessness increased 47.1 percent.”

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But Harm Reduction isn’t the only anti-responsibility policy promoted by the homeless industrial complex.

A close cousin is “Housing First.” We explain it this way in Infiltrated:

Housing First emphasizes providing immediate, permanent housing without preconditions such as sobriety or treatment compliance. Its rationale is that stable housing provides a foundation to address deeper issues like addiction or mental illness.

That rationale, as shown above, is deeply flawed. Even in stable home environments, the afflicted will deny they have a problem and resist treatment until forced.

“California epitomizes the failings of this approach,” we write in Infiltrated. “After the state mandated all funding flow exclusively to Housing First programs (2015–2019), unsheltered homelessness increased 47.1 percent.”

According to a 2024 report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which we share in Infiltrated, the homeless population of California had ballooned to more than 187,000.

The same report showed that Texas and Florida, states with lots of residents and warm weather, much like California, had a combined homeless population of less than 60,000. Despite a combined population 15 million people greater than California, these two states together had a homelessness problem only one-third the size.

Similarly, New York has more than 158,000 homeless while sunnier and more populated Texas had less than 28,000. Washington, with far fewer people and far less sunshine than Florida, had just as many homeless as the Sunshine State.

The lesson from these numbers is irrefutable. Big cities, a great climate, and lack of housing were not what created a boom in a state’s homeless population. Bad policy was the major difference.

And the gold medalist for horrible and inhumane homeless policy goes by the name “Housing Justice.” We write of it this way in Infiltrated:

Housing Justice frames housing as a human right, advocating tenant protections, eviction defense, and systemic reforms to ensure what advocates deem equitable access. Grassroots organizations frequently champion affordability and anti-displacement campaigns under this banner, but the movement also serves as a vector for extremist co-optation. Critics argue that Housing Justice, while rooted in calls for equity, often functions as a platform for radical agendas.

We show that NGOs operating within the Housing Justice framework often reach well beyond bad homelessness policy to promote radical left-wing transformations for the entire nation. Funders Together for Housing Justice (previously Funders Together to End Homelessness) is one example. They were the lead NGO in one of the amici filings opposing the Grants Pass camping prohibition.

Funders Together, as we show in Infiltrated, using their own rhetoric, seeks racial reparations and the overthrow of capitalism:

Funders Together’s vision is to highlight what it alleges is “the legacy of racism” in housing and homelessness and to “reimagine and transform systems to be Pro Black and Pro-Indigenous using an intersectional lens to achieve housing and racial justice.” It believes that “homelessness is a racialized experience created and exacerbated by the forces of structural racism,” and claims that “white supremacy has intentionally limited growth and opportunities” for minority communities in the United States. In pursuit of what it calls “housing abundance,” Funders Together supports government reparations “in the form of money and land” as compensation for what it says are the “intentional and ongoing projects of slavery and subjugation” in the United States.

The global economy, according to Funders Together, is similarly built upon “racial capitalism,” which supposedly leverages “racial exploitation to facilitate capital accumulation.” A so-called “liberated society” can only be achieved through what amounts to a socialist welfare state, in which “everyone’s basic needs are met in full.” Funders Together aims to “decommodify” the housing sector, replacing it with Green New Deal-style public housing.

Infiltrated shows these goals and similar are shared by many of the Grants Pass antagonists and their allies. The agendas and the NGOs promoting them often come off as more irrational than the troubled people they claim to be helping.

Radical Agendas

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“…the homelessness debate is not about compassion versus cruelty, but about which ideology will govern America’s civic life and actually help her citizens.” — Christopher Rufo

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There is even an overlap with pro-Hamas sympathies.

The San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is one of the amici co-signers. As we write in Infiltrated, the DSA’s radical agenda for America goes well beyond homeless policy and socialism:

DSA applauded the October 7 attacks, praising “the just armed resistance in Palestine” for its “struggle against American imperialism.” The group even cheered on Iran’s direct missile and drone attacks on Israel, stating, “the Iranian defensive strikes have helped to further undermine the mantle of invincibility which the Zionist project has constructed.”

A left-wing litigation group named the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote one of the briefs submitted to oppose the Grants Pass camping prohibition. But unlike the fringy Democratic Socialists of America, CCR was a leader in the attack on the town, not a follower. The CCR brief was co-signed by 45 other NGOs, including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, Make the Road New York, and the National Women’s Law Center, all of which have reported annual revenue in excess of $20 million.

The research for Infiltrated uncovered this about the CCR agenda:

In an abhorrent same-day response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks against Israel, the Center characterized them as “Palestinian armed resistance from occupied Gaza,” referred to what it claimed was “the international legal right of colonized people to resist colonial domination,” and declared that “Palestinian resistance fighters” were within their rights to “carry out attacks on military targets.” Even while Hamas militants were still operating within Israel, the Center for Constitutional Rights was essentially saying that the Israelis deserved it.

As we noted, CCR’s violence-curious agenda could not have been a secret to the cosigners on its Grants Pass brief. We also found that at least nine of the 45 CCR cosigners derived at least half of their 2023 funding from government grants.

One of them was Make the Road New York:

Make the Road New York—which had 2023 total revenues of over $31.7 million—is another good example of a 501(c)(3) charity that functions as a taxpayer-funded left-wing political activist group, supporting everything from defunding the police to abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is also an example of the “megaphone philanthropy” phenomenon, as there is hardly a page on its website that does not feature imagery of protesters yelling into bullhorns and/or marching with signs that read things like “Proud Ashamed to be an American” and “Trump is not my President.”

Then there is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a serial litigant against anyone that seeks to try something other than the irrational, sometimes anti-American policies of the homelessness industrial complex.

Christopher Rufo addresses SPLC in his forward to Infiltrated:

In early 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued a series of executive orders that signaled a decisive shift. His administration rejected the prevailing narrative— that homelessness is solely a problem of housing supply and discrimination—and sought instead to restore order to public spaces, strengthen accountability for public spending, and redirect resources toward treatment, rehabilitation, and the enforcement of basic civic norms that will actually benefit the homeless and the public at large. The backlash was immediate. The National Homelessness Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and allied groups denounced the reforms as “attacks on human rights” and pledged to fight them in court. This response revealed what had long been hidden: the homelessness debate is not about compassion versus cruelty, but about which ideology will govern America’s civic life and actually help her citizens.

With annual revenue of $169.8 million in 2023 and net assets exceeding $700 million, SPLC is one of the wealthiest opponents of order in the Grants Pass debate. But it wasn’t alone at the top. There were at least nine other opponents that claim annual revenue north of $100 million.

What is a charity?

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[Michael Shellenberger] wrote that San Francisco spent $61,000 per tent to provide socially distanced shelter for the homeless during the pandemic.

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Reporting annual revenue of nearly $2.3 billion for 2023, none of the amici enemies of Grants Pass was richer than the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). Of that total, AHF reported $41.9 million came from government grants.

New York County Defender Services reported $22,376,004 in government grants for 2023, and just $159 in non-governmental revenue—or roughly $1 for each of its 157 employees. For comparison, the government of Grants Pass expects $22 million in property tax collections for 2025.^[ii]

Infiltrated lists several other examples of amici filers in Grants Pass that have reported annual revenue exceeding $30 million, with 90 percent or more coming from government grants. We point out that these supposedly non-governmental organizations should be more honestly described as “basically government organizations.”

Another of the richest opponents with a Grants Pass amici filing, with annual revenue that regularly hits $200 million, was the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. The ACLU submitted a brief against the city of Grants Pass that was cosigned by 19 of its local affiliates.

The ACLU currently enjoys a more mainstream reputation than the radical Grants Pass legal combatants listed above. And there are others similarly situated. The League of Women Voters of California and religious groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are some of the others.

The League of Women Voters (LWV) has successfully cultivated the reputation of a neutral promoter of political debates and fair elections. But appearances are deceiving. For decades LWV has been promoting policy positions well to the left of mainstream America.

In 2019, for example, LWV attached its name and reputation to a petition endorsing the so-called Green New Deal that was introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Aptly described as a “socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy” by conservatives, the proposal was even derided by former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as the “The green dream, or whatever they call it…”

Neither LWV nor the ACLU are noted for the beds and treatment they provide for the homeless. This is true of many of the opponents of order in the Grants Pass case. In Infiltrated, we examine this disconnect between what Americans believe to be charity and what left-wing advocates are really promoting within the charitable space:

What makes the Grants Pass amici striking, however, is not simply their tax status but the tension between public perception and actual practice. Americans tend to associate 501(c)(3) charities with work like sheltering the homeless or running food banks, and many amici indeed provide such services. The Court itself acknowledged their importance in supporting unsheltered individuals.

But that same tax status also applies to a smaller group of amici whose activities are rather less intuitively “charitable.” These organizations focus primarily on advocacy, using litigation, lobbying-adjacent campaigns, and public messaging to advance broader political or ideological agendas. Despite operating under the same tax status as food banks and homeless shelters, their missions frequently stem from highly contested policy debates.

In San Fransicko, Michael Shellenberger provided comically tragic anecdotes demonstrating what happens when good money is thrown after bad ideas to fix real problems. In one example, he wrote that San Francisco spent $61,000 per tent to provide socially distanced shelter for the homeless during the pandemic. Shellenberger wrote this was “2.5 times the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city.”

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” wrote philosopher Eric Hoffer. The United States has more resources to address any challenge than any nation in the history of nations. We spend more than enough to provide and mandate the mental health and substance abuse treatment that would mitigate homelessness with genuine compassion.

But in Infiltrated we demonstrate that too many of the NGOs trusted to accomplish these worthy goals are aiming the money they receive at every solution that benefits their cause, rather than the needy. “Without clearer boundaries between service and advocacy,” we conclude at the end of our report, “the United States will continue to spend at scale while leaving tens of thousands on the streets.”

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/homeless-advocacy-reckless-radicals/