Cicero Institute advocates for policies that advance liberty, innovation, and accountability. as a senior fellow, I focus on homelessness and public safety.
San Diego, CA
Joined February 2021
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Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Today, we broke ground on the Treasure Island Behavioral Health Building—a facility that will soon serve up to 300 people who need treatment and transitional housing while in recovery.
When completed in 2028, this facility will give patients a place to receive care and access recovery housing. The transitional recovery-housing beds will offer up to two years of stable housing to people who complete the residential program.
Bringing these services together under one roof means someone can begin treatment and move into a stable, supportive place to live as they continue their recovery journey. The facility will join more than 2,900 behavioral health beds operated by the San Francisco Department of Public Health for people with substance use disorder and mental health needs.
Recovery takes time, and people need support along the way.
We're making progress in San Francisco. Fewer people are sleeping on our streets than at any point in the last 15 years, and overdose deaths are down nearly 25 percent this year.
But our work isn't done. We're building a system that connects people to treatment faster and gives them the support they need to rebuild their lives.
When someone is ready to accept help, we need to be ready to provide it.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
The Crisis of Mental Illness and The Flaws of Current Civil Commitment Laws
🎥: @dkurtzz
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Here's a radical idea: if an NGO takes taxpayer money, taxpayers get to see what it bought. Mississippi just made that law. Every state that refuses should explain who they're protecting.
Mississippi is leading the charge on transparency, efficiency, and accountability. This year it passed a first-of-its-kind NGO transparency law:
📊 Spending tracked
🎯 Measurable outcomes
📋 Leadership disclosures
🔍 Audits published online
🚫 No grant money for political activity
⛔ Violators held responsible
Taxpayers deserve to see where their money goes. Every state should follow Mississippi.
Read the full paper by our @elenagzf and @ERomboldi:
ciceroinstitute.org/research…
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Homelessness just saw its LARGEST one year drop since the national count began, down more than 6%, over 47,000 fewer people.
Our Public Safety Policy Director @dkurtzz in the New York Times: “Housing remains spectacularly expensive in most of the country and yet homelessness still fell.”
The housing costs explain everything theory keeps failing the data.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Housing First is a failure.
Developer Steven Taylor bought a Cheviot Hills property for $11 million, then sold it to the City of LA for $27 million in taxpayer money for “homeless housing.”
It’s still empty. Still under construction. Zero homeless people housed.
This is the scam. We are ending it.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
$2 MILLION and 20 YEARS in prison—that’s the penalty landlords face under the federal Crack House Statute for knowingly letting drugs spread through their buildings. Congress passed it during the 1980s crack epidemic.
Harm reduction is rooted fundamentally in the belief that people have a right to use drugs. The philosophy prioritizes practices that assist people in using drugs in ways that advocates view as safer than others.
Harm reduction is the core principle of Housing First programs, which provide housing to homeless individuals without any requirement for sobriety or engagement with treatment or services.
Providers that permit drug use in their units as a matter of policy are exposed to the same statute.
It’s already on the books. Prosecutors should use it.
ciceroinstitute.org/blog/hou…
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
This is pretty much how it works. Our @InstituteCicero team did the research and NGO pay increased immensely while homelessness continued to climb. They are funding themselves more than solutions.
Homelessness is down in San Francisco and San Jose because they have mayors who embraced accountability and recovery. LA spent $950 million on NGOs committed to harm reduction and housing that allows drug use. Add fraud and you have the perfect storm. @MayorOfLA @nithyavraman
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Michelle Dewitt tried to get her son into a mental health facility, but there were no beds. She petitioned a court for involuntary commitment, and a hospital held him for 14 days before releasing him back to her care.
With no other options –– the family dropped him at a homeless shelter. She later saw him walking the streets.
August 22, 2025 –– he boarded a Charlotte train without purchasing a ticket.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
The dysfunction in our cities is not accidental. It is often the product of a philosophy that views chaos as a means to undermine faith in America.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a convict fakes insanity to escape a prison sentence, lands in a psychiatric ward, and leads the patients in rebellion against the nurse who runs it.
It won 5 Academy Awards. It also became a powerful piece of propaganda the deinstitutionalization movement used: the asylum as prison, the patient as hero, the cure as escape.
A generation came away convinced that mental illness was noble resistance and the asylum an instrument of oppression.
Today the U.S. has fewer than 40,000 psychiatric beds. More than half are filled through the criminal justice system. The number of mentally ill homeless people is the highest on record.
The movie ended. The patients are still outside.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Big shift in San Francisco homelessness policy: moving away from harm reduction (free crack pipes) to recovery-focused services!
missionlocal.org/2026/10/san…
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
$225 MILLION a year—that’s what California stands to LOSE in federal homelessness funding if its Continuums of Care don’t adapt to HUD’s new reforms.
Our new report breaks down the exposure:
ciceroinstitute.org/research…
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
We're not funding the end of homelessness. We're funding a lifestyle for the people who manage it. $118M in, up to $12M allegedly pocketed, and the tents and fentanyl zombies are still there.
More homeless nonprofit owners getting filthy rich in Los Angeles, California
- One bought a fancy home in Greece
- A $7 million dollar LA mansion
- One bought a nightclub
- Luxury travel and expenses Rolex watches purchased
Meanwhile residents in LA say their beaches look like Burning Man in the morning because of all the homeless tents
One nonprofit owner Michael Young, founder of the ‘Culver City nonprofit Home At Last’ is charged with wire fraud for allegedly diverting up to $12 million in public homelessness funds. He’s the one who opened a nightclub and bingo hall
Michael Young’s nonprofit received more than $118 million in public funds from LAHSA, the City and County of Los Angeles, and HUD, with LAHSA alone paying Home At Last more than $75 million for homeless housing services
Again, this is only one nonprofit
We are being taxed WAY too much. Abolish the income tax. No one should be paying taxes for this
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
“Thank you for putting me in a hospital; you saved my life.”
That’s what involuntary treatment looks like when it works. Not pleasant. Worth it.
Thank you @DeborahGeesling for sharing your family’s experience and story.
This is accurate. Our son periodically thanks us. Yesterday he told his father, “Thank you for putting me in a hospital; you saved my life.” We also used involuntary outpatient treatment.
It’s not pleasant, but neither is my upcoming back surgery. I’ll walk again pain-free. My son isn’t homeless and has a decent life. Some things are hard, but worth it for the outcome.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
The homelessness industry lost in court. Now it’s trying Congress –– Their new ask: $5.1 BILLION.
Not gonna happen.
Every single day. Every game you play.
We'll be watching you.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
The homelessness industry lost in court. Now it’s trying Congress.
HUD reformed the homelessness funding process to pay for outcomes instead of activity. The National Alliance to End Homelessness and a group of providers sued to stop it. After a months-long fight, the 1st Circuit (one of the most progressive in the nation) cleared the reforms.
NAEH’s new ask: a $5.1 BILLION appropriation for HUD’s homeless assistance grants, an $800 million increase from last year, plus language requiring HUD to automatically renew every expiring grant for another year, without requiring providers to reapply or compete.
The whole point of the new competition is to stop automatically funding the same failed thing over and over. Automatic renewal is the thing being reformed. HUD is shifting federal funding to pay for outcomes. The homeless industrial complex’s response is to push for EVEN LESS accountability.
Our analysis of 1,458 HUD-funded homeless NGOs found that compensation went up 118% from 2013 to 2024. Homelessness rose 31% over the same period.
An industry that doubled its pay while the problem grew is now asking Congress for a raise and an exemption from the rules.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
Prop 47 didn’t just reduce penalties. It cut the single most reliable path from addiction to treatment: the justice system. Treatment admissions fell 20%. Unsheltered homelessness rose 10%.
Our Senior Fellow @Hopestreetco in @CityJournal on what California’s experiment actually showed:
Since Prop. 47 passed in 2014, California has seen a roughly 10 percent increase in the unsheltered homelessness rate, or around 7,000 additional people sleeping on the streets, Paul Webster writes. city-journal.org/article/cal…
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
OPERATION SAVE SKID ROW:
“The homicide rate in Skid Row is more than 10 times the rate of the rest of the greater Los Angeles area.”
Patrick Grandy of the FBI says the drugs were distributed with the sole purpose of keeping this vulnerable population addicted, and preying on that addiction.
Paul Webster - Cicero Institute retweeted
'PPIC found that since Prop. 47’s passage, the state has seen a roughly 10 percent increase in the unsheltered homelessness rate, or around 7,000 additional people sleeping on the streets. This accounts for about one-fifth of the state’s total unsheltered population growth between 2015 and 2019.' @Hopestreetco @CityJournal
city-journal.org/article/cal…
