Homeless people have been defined by legal and welfare systems, and by the growing establishment of special homeless courts as a separate grouping of people. Unhoused people experience unique oppressions, such as "quality of life" citations and often de facto voter disenfranchisement, based on their status of being homeless.

The challenge for WRAP is to struggle against those forms of oppression and to struggle for universal housing, while at the same time contesting this very definition of homeless people as an alien, distinct category of people without basic human rights. For a civil rights movement to be successful, it must defend those under attack by unjust laws and place pressure on the courts and lawmakers to honor legal protections.

WRAP uses legal defense to stop the illegal confiscation of property and criminalization of people without housing in its tracks. We recruit and train local volunteer attorneys to represent homeless and poor people in court and to work with community organizers on the larger Without Rights campaign. Our legal defense team translates legalese into common language, documents the trends and impacts of these discriminatory laws, and strategically plans for class action litigation and legislative remedies.