New Federal Bill to Ban Registrants from Homeless Shelters
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has introduced legislation that would bar registered citizens from entering federally funded shelters. It’s called the ‘Safe Shelters for Survivors Act of 2026’.
The proposal overlooks a glaring and uncomfortable reality. A disproportionate share of the homeless population is made up of people on the registry — not because they choose homelessness, but because a dense web of laws makes stable housing and employment extraordinarily difficult to obtain. Residency restrictions carve entire cities into exclusion zones. Employment barriers close doors before an application is even considered. And even where the laws does not explicitly prohibit housing or work, the stigma attached to the registry often does the job. Landlords refuse to rent. Employers decline to hire. The outcome is not surprising.
Here’s the paradox: registry laws create homelessness, and then new laws punish the very homelessness those policies helped create. Proposals like this one would cut off access to shelters — the very places designed to keep people off the streets. What, exactly, is the intended result?
In states like Florida, the contradiction is even more stark. Florida has some of the strictest residency restrictions in the nation, and local ordinances have produced well-documented housing instability. Now add Section 125.0231, Florida Statutes — enacted in 2024 through House Bill 1365 — which criminalizes public sleeping and camping. Consider the sequence… restrict where someone can live so they wind up homeless, deny access to shelters so they have to sleep on the streets, and then criminalize sleeping outdoors. Where is that supposed to lead? If a person cannot legally reside in broad swaths of a community, cannot enter a shelter, and cannot sleep outside, what option remains other than incarceration?
You can contact Rep. Mace here: https://mace.house.gov/contact. If you get a meaningful response (not an auto-responder), you can share it below.
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This is EXACTLY what they want. Just like the Galactic Empire. You do your time, then your time starts over again. A revolving door.
Its crazy trying to find work on the registry. My offense occurred long enough ago that it doesn’t show on a background check, but what does show my registration status. Really they should make it so it doesn’t show on a general check. I’ve worked many places through a staffing company but couldn’t get hired on regular staff due to personal bias or the fact that their insurance wouldn’t cover me.
Where is her proof that we are so dangerous?
It’s what i have been screaming for the last 10 years. First they hit you with a ton of local restrictions then they use the the local restrictions as precedent for federal ones soon as i stated 10 years ago there will be no where to live no benefits we will receive and no protection from anyone when it comes to vigilantism.
They are trying federally to take away medical benefits by proposing a law that disqualifies us from being eligible for the healthcare market place
the fact that the majority of us cannot find employment to pay for medical this will take bar us from medical insurance qualifications, which will include Medicaid for emergency room visits
There are Florida bills that other states are copying that are trying to give the death penalty for sexual predators. soon this will be federal then the predators will turn into offenders and on and on and on.
All of the action committees and people that are left defending people on the registry have to pool their resources and fight this at a larger scale as one unit. Battling one new local law/ordinance at a time has us waist deep in an ocean rising every month about to swallow us up
What’s worse is, those that don’t support these iinsane proposals against us are going to vote “yea” out of fear of being called a “pedo protector” on social media. It’s actually far worse than politcal blackmail because it’ circumvents truth and reality for outrage and retaliation.
YES, we ARE being victimized politically.
Ackchuallly (cue nerd pushing up glasses emoji here), I don’t think most of these laws ever started at the local level, although it does, at times, inspire such laws at the state level.
Back in 2010, the feds introduced THREE bills in Congress– a ban on Federal Housing Authority (FHA) home loans; a ban on obraning Unemployment Compensation, and a business loan through the Small Business Administration (SBA)
The SBA loan ban DID get signed into law. The other two were advancing; they both cleared the House, but did not pass in time. Thankfully, they were not reintroduced.
Back in 2014, the feds tried taking away SNAP benefits from Registrants; it was watered down to apply only to those who committed a sexual or murder offense after February 7, 2014, and they are not in compliance with their sentence or parole.
This goes back farther than ten years at the federal level. It isn’t often the feds push sexual offense laws like this but it isn’t new, either.
Although, the shelter ban law introduced by Nancy Mace was inspired by FloriDUH shelter bans.
When will the 14th Amendment be brought into play? I do not remember having that right adjudicated away during sentencing. Medicare, Shelters, the list goes on and on. But these politicos would rather use propaganda and public opinion rather than the constitution.
At this point, asking what state and federal legislatures truly want with their ever-escalating, tyrannical sex offender laws is pure sarcasm.
Just examine the historical pattern: Black Codes (1865–1866), convict leasing, poll taxes and literacy tests, grandfather clauses (1890s–1910s), white primaries (1920s), felony disenfranchisement, “separate but equal” (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896), anti-miscegenation laws, residential segregation and restrictive covenants, the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act), the forced deportation of Mexican Americans (1930s), the Indian Removal Act (1830), the Dawes Act (1887), the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), Japanese American internment (Executive Order 9066, 1942), redlining (1930s–1960s), federal government segregation (1913)…
Need I continue? It only gets uglier. This barely scratches the surface of America’s enduring tradition of state and federal “crimes against humanity” dressed up as laws to “protect the people.”
Now comes the modern chapter: lifetime public registries that permanently brand individuals—including juveniles and those convicted of non-violent or consensual acts—as outcasts; draconian residency restrictions barring them from living near schools, parks, or entire neighborhoods; employment blacklists; bans on social media or internet access; indefinite civil commitment even after sentences end; chemical (and in some states, surgical) castration for certain offenses; and registration for minor acts like public urination or teen statutory cases.
These measures apply indiscriminately, shatter lives far beyond any evidence-based risk of recidivism, and transform “protection” into a mechanism for endless punishment and social banishment.
It’s the same old playbook: mask control, exclusion, and raw vengeance as public safety. The real agenda? Not safety—control, tyranny, abuse, and torment. Bread and circuses.
What else would you expect from a government still scrambling to shield itself from its own Epstein horrors? They do say those who point the finger most have the most to hide dont they… is it deflection we smell? Dont look at us your government guilty of islands of human trafficking look over there at that peasant trying to live his life!! destroy him not us..
Very well written. Should be pinned for all to read and reference when arguments come up.