First things first: Have Mayor Kirk Watson and the city’s Homeless Strategies and Operations department been meeting with the Cicero Institute – the right-wing think tank working to sweep homeless people off the nation’s streets?
That was one question at City Council’s Tuesday work session, as city staff briefed the dais on the groundbreaking No Wrong Door program, which began operating this spring. No Wrong Door is designed to help people with complex mental health issues, who use extensive public resources by cycling from homelessness, to the county jail, to hospital treatment, and back onto the streets.
It appears there are two answers to the Cicero question. Watson, who was traveling and not at the work session, supplied the Chronicle with one of them: “My office has had no contact with the Cicero Institute regarding No Wrong Door.”
HSO’s David Gray, however, told Council on Tuesday that he has met with the Cicero Institute and with a similar statewide group, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Gray explained that his office meets with people regardless of their political orientation, calling the meetings an “opportunity for us to educate them on the work that we’re doing, so that they could help be champions for some of the causes that we are working towards.” Carrie Rogers, who works at the city’s Government Relations office, told Council she also attended a meeting with the groups.
This information will not sit well with Austin’s advocate community, which denounces the Cicero Institute for its efforts to criminalize homelessness, including here in Austin. VOCAL-TX and other groups have worked to educate the public about Cicero and its leader, Joe Lonsdale, a tech billionaire who made his fortune as a co-founder of the government surveillance firm Palantir, which facilitates ICE detentions. Lonsdale is a close ally of Donald Trump, has called for public hangings, and wants Texas Republicans to strip Austin of the power to govern its own affairs.
The question of whether city officials are conferring with Cicero arose last week, after VOCAL-TX’s Cate Graziani sent an email to Council saying she had learned that the mayor’s office and HSO had held monthly meetings with the group. Also included with the email was a letter from the ACLU, local public defenders, and other advocates expressing concern about the role Austin police are playing in No Wrong Door.
The letter stated that Austin Police Department officers have visited people in jail and asked them to sign documents in connection with No Wrong Door without an attorney present. It stated that officers have collected personal information from potential participants and shared it with other city and county officials, something that could impact future criminal proceedings. It urged city leaders to either remove APD from the program or adopt safeguards to protect the civil rights of potential program participants.
The letter also stated that the city’s Government Relations office has confirmed it is working with state lawmakers on legislation that would change how Texas responds to people with psychiatric and substance use disorders. It referred to a separate letter, sent from Mayor Watson to state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst on July 24, in which Watson proposes lowering the legal standard for involuntary psychiatric intervention for people participating in outpatient treatment programs, one of the goals of the Cicero Institute. However, the advocates also stated their support for some aspects of No Wrong Door, opening their letter by stating, “We share the program’s goal of coordinating housing, treatment, and other services for people with complex behavioral needs, and we want that work to succeed.”
No Wrong Door was described at Tuesday’s Council meeting as a creative and ambitious program sitting at the intersection of public safety, behavioral health, and homelessness. It brings together 17 groups, including public safety agencies, local hospitals, nonprofits, and public health providers, to develop individual treatment plans for the most vulnerable people in our community. These people were identified in a study released in August by the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, which estimates that 950 Travis County residents, referred to as “high utilizers,” cycle through jail cells, hospital rooms, and homeless services programs.
According to the study, the high utilizers made up 2% of the total number of people arrested by police from 2021 to 2025, but about one-sixth of all arrests – meaning they were arrested and rearrested frequently. Of those arrested, 85% had experienced homelessness. Over half had experienced behavioral health issues like schizophrenia and substance use disorder. The study estimated that this continued cycle costs about $144,000 per person, $137 million annually.
City staff suggested on Tuesday that No Wrong Door is already producing results. Maris Herold, APD’s chief of strategic initiatives, told Council that providers began offering services to 99 of the high utilizers in May. Three months later, she said, data shows that calls from program participants to police fell by 31%, from one call every 11 days to one every 16 days. For the 28 highest-risk participants, calls dropped 57%. One high utilizer, referred to as Oscar in the study, had monthly calls to police and EMS drop by 74% and 66%, respectively.
But many who commented on No Wrong Door said they are uncomfortable with the program’s surveillance and carceral overtones. “Medical providers cannot be placed in an ethical quandary where clinical care becomes a pathway to surveillance or enforcement,” Snehal Patel, a public health provider, told Council. “Our clients’ liberty, autonomy, and defense are at stake,” said attorney Bradley Hargis of the Capital Area Private Defender Service. “Good intentions cannot substitute for access to counsel.”
Some of the most compelling arguments in support of the program came from Herold, who noted that unhoused women with mental illness are 20 times more likely than others to be sexually assaulted. Herold demonstrated that city staff know many of the high utilizers personally because of their frequent encounters with them, describing a chronically homeless woman named Mary who Herold said is being trafficked for sex.
“Mary’s been living on the streets of Austin for decades,” Herold said. “She has cycled in and out of that horrible, vicious cycle that we’re all talking about, it’s hard to count how many times. But what’s sad to me is, when you talk about Mary, the data almost stops a couple of years ago. And that’s because everybody has just stopped thinking that the systems in place can help Mary.”
Herold, Gray, and other city staff pledged to continue refining No Wrong Door to address civil rights concerns. Gray also offered a take on the controversial subject of involuntary commitment. “There is no liberty in releasing someone from jail just to have them die on our streets,” Gray said. “For some of our clients, the best possible outcome we can hope for is inpatient, long-term treatment.”
This article appears in October 9 • 2026.
