Indiana Advocates Successfully Defeat Three Iterations of Homelessness Criminalization Legislation

By Billy Cerullo, Housing Advocacy Organizer and Tori Bourret, Manager, State and Local Innovation Outreach  

After an intensive and prolonged advocacy campaign, the Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition (HHNC) defeated three versions of a Cicero Institute-sponsored bill to criminalize homelessness in the Indiana General Assembly. Efforts to criminalize homelessness on a state and local level have increased over the past year following the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial decision in the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson case allowing jurisdictions to arrest and ticket unhoused people for sleeping outside, even when adequate shelter or housing is unavailable.   

The effort to criminalize homelessness began with the introduction of HB 1662 (Rep. Michelle Davis, District 54). The bill ultimately failed when it was not called down for a final House vote by the February 20 deadline in the first half of the legislative session. Criminalization language was then added as an amendment to SB 197 introduced by Sen. Aaron Freeman without opportunity for public comment. Following thousands of calls from members and allies of HHNC, the amendment was ultimately removed from the bill in Conference Committee. The third and final effort to pass criminalization language took form in HB 1014 (Rep. Alex Zimmerman, District 67) with language clandestinely added to the bill. That language was also subsequently defeated and removed in Conference Committee one day before the close of the 2025 Indiana General Assembly.  

“Defeating Cicero-backed criminalization of homelessness bills three times in a single legislative session was a huge relief for Hoosiers and their communities, but the debate should never have happened,” said Andrew Bradley, NLIHC Board Member and Senior Director of Policy and Strategy at Prosperity Indiana. “Indiana already has one of the lowest rates of affordable and available housing in the Midwest and the legislature has yet to implement their own housing and homelessness task force recommendations. But with coordination among housing advocates, homeless service providers, and people with lived experience alongside faith groups, veterans, law enforcement, local governments, and other community partners, we ultimately convinced the legislature to reject all three Cicero bills.”  

Not only did HHNC mobilize its membership of 2,500 individuals to take action, they also partnered with a broad group of allies and stakeholders that included the Indiana Sheriffs Association, Helping Veterans and Families (HVAF), and the Indiana Association of Counties, all of whom gave public testimony and voiced opposition to the criminalization of homelessness legislation. The agreement among the diverse stakeholders that criminalizing homelessness is not only inhumane, but impractical was pivotal in pushing the General Assembly to pull the language threefold.   

"I am pleased that the cookie-cutter legislation has been defeated,” said Leslea Townsend-Cronin, Executive Director of the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana. “Taking unhoused people to jail causes additional trauma that will decrease the likelihood of housing, not increase it. I am hopeful that Indiana continues to keep its more vulnerable populations in mind in the next legislative session." 

Learn more about strategies to defeat homelessness criminalization legislation here.