Today, the Capital Research Center (CRC) released a new report in cooperation with Discovery Institute exploring how extremist ideological movements are exploiting America’s homelessness crisis, which can include hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people on any given night.
Using financial data, legal records, and original research, the report uncovers a vast network of homelessness advocates that spend billions in taxpayer dollars and philanthropic grants on everything but obvious solutions. The report demonstrates that counterproductive policies have been used for years which do not solve the homelessness problem, but rather exacerbate common root causes of homelessness, including mental health challenges and substance abuse.
The key findings of the report expose the groups that have co-opted the homelessness issue in order to advance their own policy agenda, which, if left unchecked, will result in radical transformations for the entire nation. Groups aligned with radical — and even extremist — worldviews, ranging from anti-police and anti-capitalist movements to groups that express support for foreign terrorist organizations. They include, among others:
- Western Regional Advocacy Project: The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a 501(c)(3), has received support from Tides-affiliated entities and has coordinated anti-sweep campaigns across cities, tying housing to anti-capitalist critiques in publications like Street Spirit, which labels U.S. governance “neoliberal fascism.” In fact, the nonprofit glorifies violence targeting law enforcement and is a state-level endorser of the Housing Justice platform.
- Autonomous Tenants Union Network (ATUN): The group believes that “overthrowing capitalism” is required for solving the country’s homelessness problem. Its website states: “We fight for a world without landlords and without rent. We fight to build tenant power in order to end the immiseration of the poor and working classes that housing represents under capitalism and to contribute to the struggle to end capitalism itself.”
- Right to the City Alliance: This 501(c)(3) nonprofit, known for its protests through the national Homes for All campaign, has engaged in joint endorsement of pro-Hamas 501(c)(3) nonprofits including the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance that declared, “From Palestine to Mexico, all borders and militarized violence have got to go!”
These are a few examples of actors exploiting structural vulnerabilities in the nonprofit sector — including lax oversight, complex funding channels, and even the legal system — to advance ideas that are not merely unorthodox, but deeply destabilizing for our country.
Hellbound and Down 