Lobbying: PHMH

Why lobbying matters

Lobbying is how organizations try to shape federal policy. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA),
anyone paid to lobby Congress or federal agencies must register and file quarterly reports naming the issues
they worked on, the bills and agencies they targeted, and what they spent. Those filings are our window into who is trying to influence homelessness policy, and how that effort has grown over time.

There are two ways an organization shows up in the record:

In-house lobbying

An organization lobbies for itself: its own staff are the registered lobbyists. In the data, the client and the firm are the same organization.

Example: the National Affordable Housing Management Association files under its own name.

Contract lobbying

An organization (the client) hires an outside firm to lobby on its behalf. One firm often represents many clients: those are the biggest firms shown further down.

Example: the City of Santa Monica retains an outside firm (The Ferguson Group) to lobby for it.

Scope: U.S. federal lobbying disclosures only (state and local lobbying are filed separately).

Fun Facts

Tip: click a card to flip it for the breakdown.

📄 …filings↻

Busiest years2020: 829
2021: 553
2019: 551

🏢 …client organizations↻

By typeNonprofit: 349
Government: 253
For-profit: 82

💼 …lobbying firms↻

Where basedWashington, DC: 297
Elsewhere: 175

🏠 …% in-house↻

FilingsIn-house: 1,727
Contract: 4,876

●Who are the clients? Government entities make up 37% of all lobbying clients, and institutions based in California account for another 19%.
●Who are the superstar firms? Holland & Knight LLP represents the most clients (25). Most firms are based in Washington, DC (63% of firms), and DC firms handle 67% of all filings.
●When was the peak year? Lobbying activity peaked in 2020 with 829 filings, far above any other year (the next-highest is 553).

Where are they based?

An interactive map of where homelessness-lobbying organizations sit. Use the toggle to switch between clients (who pays to lobby) and firms (who lobbies); drag to pan and scroll to zoom. Clients are spread across the country (California leads), while firms cluster in Washington, DC (63% of them). National associations also sit in DC because that's their headquarters, not their constituency.

Organizations by U.S. state (bubble size = count)

Popular lobbying firms

The lobbying firms with the most homelessness clients, broken down by client type. Some firms specialize: Holland & Knight's clients, for example, are mostly government bodies (cities and counties).

Top firms by number of homelessness clients, colored by client type

Which government actors do they target?

Almost every filing lobbies Congress directly (96% name the House or Senate); executive agencies come second (72% of filings name at least one), led by HUD. Numbers are filings naming each actor.

Congress

Federal agencies (executive branch)

How we built this

Four steps turn raw disclosure filings into the views above:

1

Collect

Source: Senate Lobbying Disclosure (LDA) database
Year coverage: 2010-2025
Keyword list: housing first, permanent supportive housing, continuum of care, rapid re-housing, McKinney-Vento, homeless, homelessness, unsheltered, emergency shelter Suggestion?

2

Clean

Flatten to one row per filing
Standardize organization names and remove duplicates
Flag government clients (LDA flag plus a name rule for cities, counties, housing authorities)

3

Classify

Label each organization's type (government, 501(c)(3) charity, trade association, for-profit, etc.)
Hybrid method: IRS records plus an AI (LLM) classifier

4

Analyze

Who lobbied whom (agencies and bills)
Where organizations are based
How the activity changed over time