HB 1925 and the Criminalization of Homelessness in Texas

In 2021, Texas became one of the first states to enact a statewide ban on homeless camping. House Bill 1925 made it a criminal offense to camp in any public place not designated for the purpose, preempting local governments from adopting more permissive policies and imposing funding penalties on cities that failed to enforce it^[1]. The Austin-based Cicero Institute subsequently used HB 1925 as a template for model legislation introduced in statehouses across the country^[16]. Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024) removed the last constitutional constraint on such laws, holding that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit cities from enforcing camping bans even when shelter capacity is insufficient^[3]. In the year following that decision, more than 220 new camping bans were passed in cities nationwide, and 57 state-level bills were introduced in 17 states, with eight signed into law^[14].

The legal landscape has shifted decisively toward criminalization. But the research has not shifted with it. Study after study — from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — reaches the same conclusion: criminalization does not reduce homelessness^{[5][8][9][18]}. It creates criminal records that make housing harder to obtain. It costs communities roughly three times more than housing people directly^[18]. And it displaces individuals from the outreach systems designed to help them, pushing them into less visible locations where they are harder to reach and more vulnerable to harm.

This article traces the arc from HB 1925 through Grants Pass, examines how enforcement has played out across Texas cities, and evaluates the evidence against the theory that punishment can solve a housing problem.

HB 1925 — The Law

House Bill 1925 was filed during the 87th Texas Legislature, passed both chambers, and was signed by Governor Greg Abbott on June 15, 2021. It took effect on September 1, 2021^[1]. The law makes it a Class C misdemeanor — punishable by a fine of up to $500 — for any person to camp in a public place that has not been designated for camping^[1]. "Camping" is defined broadly to include using a tent, shelter, or sleeping bag, or otherwise bedding down with the intent to remain for an extended period^[2].

The law's most consequential provisions are structural rather than penal. HB 1925 preempts local governments from adopting or enforcing any policy that "prohibits or discourages" the enforcement of public camping bans^[1]. The Texas Attorney General is authorized to sue any local entity believed to be in violation, seeking injunctive relief^[2]. State grant funding is also at stake: the Governor may reduce or eliminate grants to municipalities that the AG determines have adopted non-compliant policies^[2]. Together, these provisions ensure that no Texas city can choose a non-enforcement approach without risking litigation and funding loss.

The law includes a narrow exception: a peace officer must make a "reasonable effort" to advise a person of available shelter or housing alternatives before issuing a citation, though this requirement is waived when the officer determines there is an "imminent threat to health or safety"^[1]. Local governments may establish designated camping areas, but only with an approved plan filed with the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA)^[2]. As of 2026, no Texas city has established such a designated area.

The Austin Context

HB 1925 did not emerge in a vacuum. It was a direct response to a political controversy in Austin that had become a flashpoint in the state's culture wars. In June 2019, the Austin City Council voted to repeal the city's 1997 camping ban, decriminalizing public camping within city limits^[13]. Visible encampments grew rapidly in the months that followed, generating intense backlash. On May 1, 2021, Austin voters approved Proposition B with 57 percent support, reinstating the city's camping ban^[13]. Six weeks later, Governor Abbott signed HB 1925 into law, extending the ban statewide and ensuring that no other Texas city could follow Austin's original path^[1].

The timeline is instructive: Austin's 1997 ban was repealed in June 2019, restored by voters in May 2021, and superseded by state law in September 2021 — a two-year arc that transformed a local policy debate into a statewide mandate.

SB 241 (2025): The Attempted Strengthening

In the 89th Legislature, Senator Brian Birdwell introduced Senate Bill 241, which would have significantly strengthened HB 1925's enforcement mechanisms. The bill would have allowed any citizen to file a formal complaint about camping violations, authorized the Attorney General to designate "violating local entities," and empowered the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to conduct enforcement operations in cities deemed non-compliant^[19]. Senator Birdwell ultimately pulled the bill himself in May 2025, stating he intended to revisit the proposal in the 2027 legislative session^[19]. The bill's existence signals that the political pressure for escalation has not dissipated.

Enforcement Across Texas

HB 1925 operates alongside — and in some cases on top of — existing municipal ordinances that target homelessness through nuisance, trespassing, and civility enforcement. The result is a patchwork of overlapping criminal penalties that vary significantly by city.

Houston

Houston offers the most detailed enforcement data of any Texas city, thanks to a February 2026 investigation by Houston Public Media and the University of Texas at Austin. The analysis found that since 2016, the Houston Police Department has issued more than 30,000 camping and civility citations — but to only approximately 4,700 unique individuals^[11]. The concentration of citations on a small number of people is extreme: one woman received 794 citations between 2017 and 2025, accumulating approximately $200,000 in fines^[11]. The top ten most-cited individuals each accrued more than $38,000 in fines^[11].

Enforcement has accelerated sharply. In July 2025, the City of Houston expanded its civility ordinance — which restricts sitting, lying, and sleeping in designated areas — from 12 daytime-only zones to 24/7 enforcement across downtown. In November 2025, the ordinance was extended to cover the entire East End^[11]. During the second half of 2025, HPD issued approximately 2,000 camping and civility citations, roughly double the rate of the first half of the year^[11].

These numbers matter because of what they represent: criminal records. Every citation generates a case in the municipal court system. Unpaid fines generate warrants. Warrants generate arrests. Each touchpoint creates documentation that appears on background checks conducted by landlords and the coordinated entry system that Houston has built to house people experiencing homelessness. The very people the system is designed to help become harder to house because the enforcement system creates records that complicate their applications.

San Antonio

San Antonio's enforcement has also escalated. The city issued 1,151 camping and encampment-related citations in 2022, rising to 1,783 in 2023, with approximately 1,219 issued in just the first half of 2024^[12]. The city conducted 680 encampment cleanups in 2023 and was on pace for approximately 1,100 in 2024 — an average of roughly six sweeps per day^[12]. Each sweep displaces people from established locations, separates them from service providers who know where to find them, and frequently results in the loss of personal belongings including medications, identification documents, and shelter materials.

Dallas

Dallas presents a different picture. City officials stated that HB 1925 effectively "doesn't affect Dallas" because the city's existing anti-camping ordinance was already equal to or more stringent than the state law^[15]. Dallas had been enforcing camping restrictions and conducting encampment clearances for years before HB 1925, and the state law added no new enforcement authority that the city did not already possess.

Austin

In Austin, where the political battle over camping first ignited, enforcement under both the reinstated city ordinance and HB 1925 has resulted in approximately 1,200 total citations and arrests since the state law took effect in September 2021^[13]. The city has pursued a dual strategy, coupling enforcement with the creation of transitional shelters and Bridge Shelter capacity intended to provide alternatives for displaced encampment residents.

Johnson v. Grants Pass

On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided City of Grants Pass v. Johnson in a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Gorsuch^[3]. The decision held that municipal ordinances prohibiting camping in public spaces do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, even when applied to people who have no access to shelter^[3][4].

The majority drew a distinction between criminalizing a person's status — being homeless — and criminalizing their conduct — camping in a public place. Under this framework, the law punishes an action, not a condition, and therefore does not trigger the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on status-based punishment established in Robinson v. California (1962)^[4].

The decision effectively overturned the Ninth Circuit's 2018 ruling in Martin v. Boise, which had held that cities could not enforce camping bans against people experiencing homelessness when insufficient shelter beds were available^[4]. While Martin applied only within the Ninth Circuit — and therefore did not directly constrain Texas, which sits in the Fifth Circuit — the ruling had established a constitutional principle that advocates relied on nationwide and that influenced municipal enforcement policies well beyond the western states.

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority's ruling presented people experiencing homelessness with an "impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested"^[3]. She argued that sleeping is an involuntary biological necessity, not a discretionary conduct choice, and that punishing it when no shelter alternative exists amounts to punishing the status of homelessness itself.

For Texas, where HB 1925 was already in effect, Grants Pass removed the remaining constitutional uncertainty. Before the decision, there was a theoretical possibility that a federal court could extend Martin v. Boise-style reasoning to Texas. After Grants Pass, that avenue was closed. The decision also accelerated enforcement nationwide: the ACLU documented more than 220 new camping bans passed in cities across the country in the year following the ruling, along with 57 state-level bills introduced in 17 states, eight of which were signed into law by June 2025^[14].

The Evidence on Criminalization

The legal authority to criminalize homelessness is now firmly established. Whether it works is a separate question — and one that research answers clearly.

Criminalization Does Not Reduce Homelessness

In February 2025, the National Alliance to End Homelessness published a synthesis of approximately 100 studies examining the impact of criminalization on homelessness. The findings were unequivocal: criminalization does not reduce homelessness^[5]. The research showed that criminal records created by enforcement preclude access to housing and employment, that enforcement disproportionately harms Black people and other people of color, and that the resulting cycle of citation, warrant, arrest, and release becomes increasingly difficult to escape with each iteration^[5][6].

The NAEH's companion analysis on public safety found that criminalization also fails to improve community safety outcomes. Displacement moves people to new locations — often less visible but more dangerous — without reducing the total number of people experiencing homelessness^[7]. The appearance of improvement in one neighborhood comes at the cost of deteriorating conditions elsewhere.

Sweeps Cause Measurable Health Harm

A December 2022 simulation study by the National Health Care for the Homeless Council modeled the health impacts of encampment sweeps using epidemiological data. The results were severe: sweeps were associated with a 151 percent increase in overdose mortality, an 11 percent reduction in life expectancy, a 50 percent increase in hospitalizations, and a 38 percent decrease in initiations of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD)^[8]. No scenario modeled in the study — varying sweep frequency, duration, or scope — produced neutral or improved health outcomes^[8]. Every version of enforcement made things worse.

The mechanisms are straightforward. Sweeps destroy survival gear, interrupt medication regimens, sever connections to outreach workers and service providers, and force people into unfamiliar environments where they lack knowledge of resources. For people managing chronic conditions — including HIV, hepatitis C, diabetes, and mental illness — the disruption of care continuity can be life-threatening.

Criminalization Harms Public Health

A December 2024 review by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reached consistent conclusions. The review found that criminalization does not improve community health or safety, that displacement is associated with increased crimes against people experiencing homelessness (not by them), and that enforcement disrupts treatment for hepatitis C, HIV, and other communicable diseases^[9]. The American Public Health Association's 2024 analysis similarly found that displacement of encampments increases risk without reducing the population experiencing homelessness^[20].

The Cost Comparison

The financial case against criminalization is stark. The Vera Institute of Justice has documented that the average annual cost of jailing a person experiencing homelessness is approximately $83,000 per year when accounting for law enforcement, court processing, incarceration, and emergency medical services^[10]. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness has stated that this represents roughly three times the cost of providing permanent supportive housing^[18]. In Houston, where a single individual accumulated approximately $200,000 in fines over eight years of citations (2017-2025)^[11], the system spent far more on punishment than it would have spent on a housing placement.

The Housing First Tension

Houston's dual track on homelessness — simultaneous investment in housing and escalation of enforcement — represents one of the most consequential policy tensions in any American city. The city has achieved nationally significant results through Housing First: a 63 percent reduction in homelessness between 2011 and 2025, more than 30,000 people housed since 2012, and a return-to-homelessness rate of 12 percent^[17]. These outcomes were driven by the coordinated response organized through The Way Home, which uses centralized coordinated entry, vulnerability assessment, by-name lists, and data-driven case conferencing to move people from the street into housing.

The Coalition for the Homeless's encampment response strategy, launched in 2021, has been a specific success within this framework. Since its inception, more than 90 encampments have been decommissioned through a process that begins with outreach, connects residents to housing placements, and closes the site only after alternatives have been provided^[17]. Approximately 90 percent of people served through the encampment strategy have been placed into housing, and 90 percent of those have retained their housing after one year^[17]. This model — outreach first, housing placement, then site closure — is precisely the evidence-based approach that NAEH and USICH advocate as the alternative to punitive enforcement.

But enforcement has escalated in parallel. The 30,000-plus citations documented by Houston Public Media, the expansion of the civility ordinance from daytime zones to 24/7 downtown enforcement and then to the East End, and the doubling of citation rates in the second half of 2025 represent a trajectory that runs counter to the Housing First philosophy^[11]. Each citation creates a criminal record entry. Each unpaid fine generates a warrant. Each warrant complicates a person's ability to pass the background checks required for housing placements — including placements through the very coordinated entry system that Houston built.

The resource picture adds another layer of tension. In 2022, Houston's public and private leadership announced a goal of raising $70 million annually to fund homelessness services. By February 2026, the fund had raised only $31 million, and city officials acknowledged that the annual target would be "reevaluated"^[21]. Housing capacity has not kept pace with enforcement capacity. The system can issue citations faster than it can issue housing vouchers — and every citation makes the eventual voucher harder to use.

The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness has stated its position plainly: "Criminalization does not reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness"^[18]. Houston's coordinated response has demonstrated what does work. The question is whether the city's enforcement trajectory is undermining the system it built.

Comparison to Other States

Texas was early to the statewide camping ban model, but it is no longer alone. Several states have since passed their own laws, with enforcement mechanisms that range from comparable to dramatically more severe.

Tennessee: The Felony Approach

Tennessee's HB 978, signed in 2022, made camping on certain state-owned property a Class E felony — making it the only state in the country to classify homeless camping as a felony offense^[15]. A felony conviction carries far more severe collateral consequences than a misdemeanor: permanent criminal record, loss of voting rights in many circumstances, and near-total exclusion from housing programs that screen for felony histories. Despite the severity of the statute, enforcement has been minimal: only four arrests were made under the law in its first two years, and zero prosecutions were completed^[15]. The gap between the law's severity and its actual use suggests that the statute functions more as a political statement than an operational enforcement tool.

Florida: The Citizen Enforcement Model

Florida's HB 1365, signed in 2024, took a different approach by creating a private enforcement mechanism. The law requires local governments to prohibit camping on public property and authorizes individual citizens and the Attorney General to file lawsuits against municipalities that fail to enforce the ban^[15]. This citizen-suit provision shifts enforcement pressure from law enforcement to private litigation, creating a model in which any resident can become a plaintiff against their own city for insufficient enforcement.

The Cicero Institute Template

The organizational thread connecting these state-level bans is the Cicero Institute, an Austin-based policy organization founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. The Cicero Institute explicitly developed HB 1925 as a model for other states and has promoted versions of the legislation through conservative policy networks^[16]. NPR documented in May 2024 that the Institute had played a role in advancing camping ban legislation in multiple states, using Texas's law as proof of concept^[16]. The pattern — statewide preemption of local authority, Attorney General enforcement powers, and funding penalties for non-compliance — has become a template that legislatures can adopt with minimal modification.

The Alternative: Housing-Centered Encampment Response

The evidence-based counterpoint to the criminalization wave is the housing-centered encampment response model that Houston's Coalition for the Homeless pioneered before the enforcement escalation began. NAEH and USICH both advocate an approach that follows a sequence: sustained outreach, relationship-building, housing placement, and only then site closure — with no citations issued at any stage^[17][18]. Houston's own encampment strategy demonstrated 90 percent housing placement rates using this model^[17]. The contrast between that approach and the 30,000-citation enforcement track illustrates the choice every city faces: invest in housing pipelines that resolve homelessness, or invest in enforcement systems that recycle it.

Systemic Connections & Related Articles

The criminalization of homelessness in Texas sits at the intersection of law, enforcement, and the housing systems that determine whether people can escape homelessness or are trapped in it. The broader dynamics of how the criminal justice system interacts with homelessness are examined in criminal justice and criminalization, while criminalization of survival activities focuses on the specific laws targeting sleeping, sitting, and storing belongings in public. The statewide policy landscape that shapes these enforcement patterns is analyzed in Texas homelessness landscape. Houston's alternative to pure enforcement — the coordinated Housing First model that achieved a 63 percent reduction — is documented in The Way Home, and the principles underlying that approach are detailed in Housing First principles and evidence. The relationship between the criminal justice system and poverty more broadly is explored on systemsofpoverty.info in criminal justice and poverty and Texas's criminal justice system.