Federal Officials Lay Out a Plan to Roll Back Housing First
This story is based on leaked audio recordings and transcripts from multiple sessions of the Cicero Institute’s first annual Homeless Policy Summit, along with notes taken by attendees who were in the room, including one attendee who provided the recordings. The event took place on June 5, 2026, in DC’s Le Méridien hotel. It drew public outrage, including a protest organized outside the hotel by the National Homelessness Law Center, National Coalition for the Homeless, and other advocacy groups.
The Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank known for drafting model legislation that makes it a crime for homeless people to sleep, sit, or store belongings in public, held the summit four days after the US Department of Housing and Urban Development released its FY2026 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). This rule determines how the federal government’s largest homelessness funding stream gets spent.
Paul Webster, a Cicero Institute senior fellow who moderated multiple sessions, opened the summit by telling attendees he hoped they’d “clicked on an email on Monday evening from our friends at community planning and development at HUD and had a glorious time reading the notice of funding opportunity for the Continuum of Care program.”…