Austin city staff have met with the Cicero Institute and the Texas Public Policy Foundation while the city develops No Wrong Door, a program intended to coordinate services for people with complex mental health and substance-use needs. Mayor Kirk Watson said his office had no contact with Cicero about the program. The meetings were disclosed at a Tuesday City Council work session, where staff described No Wrong Door and answered questions about the groups’ involvement. David Gray, director of the city’s Homeless Strategies and Operations department, said his office meets with people across the political spectrum to explain its work and build support. Carrie Rogers of the city’s Government Relations office said she had also attended a meeting with the groups. The disclosure followed an email from advocate Cate Graziani of VOCAL-TX to Council members expressing concern that the mayor’s office and the homelessness department had held monthly meetings with Cicero. The institute has promoted policies that advocates say would criminalize homelessness. Cicero founder Joe Lonsdale is a co-founder of Palantir, a government technology company whose tools have been used in immigration enforcement. No Wrong Door began operating this spring. It brings together 17 organizations, including public safety agencies, hospitals, nonprofits and public health providers, to create individualized plans for people who repeatedly move between homelessness, jail and hospital care. A Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute study released in August estimated that about 950 Travis County residents fit this pattern. The study estimated that this group accounted for about 2% of people arrested by police from 2021 through 2025, but roughly one-sixth of all arrests. Eighty-five percent of those arrested had experienced homelessness, and more than half had behavioral health challenges, including schizophrenia or substance-use disorders. The study put the annual public cost of the cycle at about $137 million, or an estimated $144,000 per person. City staff reported early signs of reduced police contact. Maris Herold, the Austin Police Department’s chief of strategic initiatives, said providers began offering services to 99 people identified as high utilizers in May. By August, calls to police from program participants had fallen 31%, from about one call every 11 days to one every 16 days, she told Council. Calls for the 28 participants considered highest-risk fell 57%. For one participant, identified in the study as Oscar, monthly calls to police and emergency medical services dropped 74% and 66%, respectively. But advocates and service providers questioned whether police involvement and information-sharing could put participants’ rights at risk. A letter to city leaders from the ACLU, local public defenders and other advocates said officers had visited people in jail and asked them to sign No Wrong Door documents without a lawyer present. It also raised concerns that information collected from potential participants could be shared with city and county officials and affect later criminal cases. The letter urged the city to remove police from the program or add safeguards, including protections for access to counsel. Public health provider Snehal Patel told Council that medical care must not become a route to surveillance or enforcement. Bradley Hargis of the Capital Area Private Defender Service said participants’ liberty and legal defense were at stake, and that good intentions were not a substitute for legal counsel. The advocates’ letter also raised questions about state policy. It said the city’s Government Relations office was working with state lawmakers on legislation concerning responses to psychiatric and substance-use disorders. In a July 24 letter to state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, Watson proposed lowering the legal threshold for involuntary psychiatric intervention for people in outpatient treatment programs—a policy area Cicero has also advocated for. The advocates said they support No Wrong Door’s goal of coordinating housing and treatment, while calling for stronger civil-rights protections. Herold defended the need for intervention, describing how unhoused women with mental illness face heightened risks of sexual assault. She also recounted the case of a chronically homeless woman, referred to as Mary, who she said had been trafficked and repeatedly cycled through the systems the program is intended to connect. Herold said the systems had effectively stopped expecting they could help her. Gray and other city staff said they would keep refining the program in response to concerns. Gray argued that, for some people, long-term inpatient treatment may be the best available outcome, saying that releasing someone from jail without adequate support can leave them at risk of dying on the street. The debate leaves the city balancing two urgent goals: connecting people to sustained care and preventing a response to homelessness and behavioral health crises from expanding surveillance or coercion. Council members and advocates are pressing for the program’s results to be matched by clear protections for participants.