This paper investigates policy responses to homelessness across cities in the United States. Conceptualizing the urban environment as a site of governance (Horak and Young 2012), this paper studies the role of external pressures, particularly federal policy incentives, in shaping municipal policymaking. Having identified three major policy innovations at the federal level, this paper uses a multimethod approach - event history analysis and qualitative case studies – to analyze the political, institutional, and contextual factors affecting the speed of adoption at the local level. The focus on policymaking at the municipal level fills an important gap in the academic literature on homelessness, which thus far neglects the complex policy processes at play and an assessment of patterns of policy responses across the United States. Further, centering the city in investigating the dynamics of policy development and adoption in multi-level systems of governance contributes insights for a variety of policy fields, and allows for a nuanced understanding of the complexity of policy making at the municipal level and the role of individual actors, local conditions, and intergovernmental pressures in determining policy choice.