Imagine you are a billionaire able to fund any cause you choose. What would you do?

If you’re Joe Lonsdale, billionaire co-founder of Palantir, possibly the most technologically advanced organization in the world, your pet project is taking housing benefits away from homeless people.

You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Lonsdale is chairman of the Cicero Institute, and the leading proponent of the Trump administration’s attack on the “housing-first” approach to homelessness.

Lonsdale’s oversized role in pushing this punitive agenda was outed in August by Sophie Hurwitz at Mother Jones. “Lonsdale […] argues that fining and arresting people for sleeping in public will push them into mental health treatment.”

I’m all for the treatment-first approach to homelessness, because the treatment for homelessness is providing housing. Lonsdale’s theory is that the homeless are either drug addicts, mentally ill, or both. For a person at the helm of the world’s largest data-gathering organization, he completely ignores the facts on homelessness, such as:

Fact One: People are not homeless because they are mentally ill or drug addicts. They are homeless because they can’t afford housing.

Fact Two: People in treatment for drug addiction need housing if they lack it, or it is nearly impossible for them to complete treatment.

Fact Three: The majority of unhoused people are employed but don’t earn enough for housing. Arresting them disrupts their employment and damages their families.

Fact Four: Nearly half of the unhoused population is disabled. They can’t work, and they don’t receive enough in disability payments to afford an apartment.

“It’s absurd to think that fining people will get them into treatment,” Dr. Margot Kushel told The New York Times. Dr. Kushel is the director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. She points out that there is a lack of addiction treatment available, thanks in part to the administration’s cuts to Medicaid.

Lonsdale is determined that no one should be able to live freely without renting or purchasing housing. The Cicero Institute, the lobbying group he funds, “has been instrumental in passing laws criminalizing camping or sleeping in public in 16 states.” What kind of dystopia is this billionaire creating, where even sleeping in cars is prohibited and subject to imprisonment and involuntary treatment?

And what is the point of this policy? Is it to save money? No! 

It would cost vastly less for Joe Lonsdale to support facilities such as those in Baltimore, Maryland, that provide a place for the unhoused to get a shower, use a locker, wash their clothes, get a free meal, get a free outfit, get ready for work, prepare for a job interview, see a doctor, and sign up for addiction treatment. Isn’t it obvious to one of the richest, most intelligent people on the planet that the support approach is less expensive and more successful than criminalizing being poor?

In a rather shocking editorial expressing support for Lonsdale’s “treatment-first” approach, Lipton Matthews wrote in The American Spectator: “The government has no obligation to underwrite dysfunction indefinitely.” No obligation to support the disabled homeless who are unable to find housing? A billionaire thinks that’s extravagant?

The treatment for homelessness is housing. The treatment for homelessness is to require that employers pay a living wage and to provide disability payments large enough to afford housing. If the government spent a little more money boosting people at the low end of the income scale, it would not have such a difficult addiction problem.

When minimal housing is available, people use it. When addiction treatment is available, people want it, use it, and benefit from it. Lonsdale’s approach to homelessness is expensive and cruel. All because a billionaire doesn’t want people sleeping in front of his property, which very soon might be nearly all the property in the U.S.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published September 9, 2026.

Sources:

“This Palantir Billionaire’s Passion Project Is Criminalizing Homelessness,” Mother Jones, August 22, 2026.

“How the Billionaire Joe Lonsdale Shaped Trump’s Homelessness Policy,” The New York Times, August 22, 2026.

“Joe Lonsdale Has a Different Answer to America’s Homelessness Crisis,” The American Spectator, August 30, 2026.

“Fixing Homelessness Starts with Billionaires,” The Washington Post, August 30, 2026.

Image courtesy of Cory Doctorow, used under Creative Commons license.