Policymaking · Bills to Votes

From Bill to Vote

How homelessness gets legislated: the bills introduced in Congress, who sponsors them, which ones lobbying groups target, and how members vote when a bill reaches the floor.

How bills become law

A bill starts when a member of Congress (its sponsor) introduces it; others sign on as co-sponsors. It is referred to a committee, where most bills quietly die. A small share are reported out, debated, and put to a floor vote in the House and Senate. If both chambers pass it and the President signs, it becomes law: often by riding inside a larger appropriations or omnibus package rather than passing on its own.

This page follows homelessness legislation along that path, and connects it back to the lobbying we tracked: which bills interest groups actually name in their filings.

How we built this

Four sources, joined on the bill:

1

Bills

  • Source: GovInfo BILLS collection
  • Filter: bills whose text mentions homelessness terms, 2010-2025
  • Result: 2,758 unique bills
2

Sponsors

  • Source: Congress.gov API
  • For each bill: sponsor (name, party, state), number of co-sponsors, and policy area
3

Votes

  • Source: Voteview roll-call records
  • Matched to our bills by congress + bill number; party splits and DW-NOMINATE ideology
4

Link to lobbying

  • Bills named in homelessness lobbying filings (from the Policy Influence page)
  • Shows which bills interest groups actually worked on

The funnel: introduced to voted-on

📜 bills introduced
🗳️ reached a floor vote
📉 made it to a vote

Bills introduced over time

Homelessness bills introduced, by year

Who introduces them?

The members who introduced the most homelessness bills, and the party balance of all sponsors. Sponsor = the member who introduced the bill.

Top bill sponsors (most homelessness bills introduced)

Who sponsors together?

A bipartite network: the most-cosponsored homelessness bills (gold squares) and the members who (co)sponsor at least three of them (dots, colored by party). The recurring "homelessness caucus" is overwhelmingly Democratic: 148 of the 158 regulars, with only 10 Republican exceptions. Hover a node for details.

Homelessness bills and their recurring (co)sponsors

What kinds of bills, and which does lobbying target?

Bills by policy area

Most-targeted bills in lobbying filings

The homelessness bills most often named in lobbying filings (click to open on Congress.gov):

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How do they vote?

When a homelessness measure reaches the floor, how do the parties split? Across all matched roll calls, homelessness votes are mostly bipartisan: the bars below show yea/nay by party.

Party split on matched homelessness roll calls