WRAP brings together five social justice organizations from four West Coast metropolitan areas to build a regional organizing, legal defense, and grassroots advocacy movement.

Full membership in WRAP depends upon an organization’s commitment to community organizing for the promotion of social justice.

Members wishing to be a part of WRAP commit to three things:

• Engaging in community organizing among homeless and formerly homeless people, and/or people at risk of homelessness.
• Engaging in community-based leadership development and empowerment work.
• Developing policy and program priorities based on feedback from outreach to the local homeless community and frontline staff.

Current members include:

Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS)

BOSS helps homeless, disabled, and poor people achieve health and self-sufficiency, and to fight against the root causes of poverty and homelessness. BOSS was created in 1971 after the closure of California's mental hospitals left massive numbers of mentally ill people without homes or support. BOSS provides WRAP with 35+ years of experience designing and operating direct service and housing programs for homeless people, strong relationships with funders, donors, and public entities working on housing, homelessness, and health issues, expertise in understanding Alameda County politics, and a deep connection with homeless people, who inform all BOSS planning and decision-making as Board members, staff, and volunteers.

www.self-sufficiency.org

Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco (COH, SF)

COH, SF was founded in 1987 to organize and unite homeless people to create permanent solutions to homelessness, while defending the civil and human rights of those forced to remain on the streets. During this time we have had tremendous impact increasing due process of poor and homeless people in several government programs, created hundreds of units of housing and treatment, and reformed institutions. We have years of experience on civil rights issues that we are able to share with WRAP and its other members. This includes legal defense work, lawsuits, and community organizing on a variety of homeless issues.

www.cohsf.org

Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN)

LA CAN, founded in 1999, is a community-based organization that organizes people dealing with poverty to create and discover opportunities, while serving as a vehicle to ensure they have voice, power and opinion in the decisions that are directly affecting them. Organizationally LA CAN is focused on civil and human rights, housing policy, economic development, health and nutrition, violence prevention, and gender equity. One of our roles within the WRAP is to contribute our extensive history and experience in combating human and civil rights abuses in Los Angeles and other regions. Also, alongside COH, SF we have shared best practices, community-based responses to common issues of criminalization, and a strong sense of speaking “truth to power” on our greater journey of speaking “power to power.”

We bring to WRAP the experience of an extensive outreach, education and recruitment model geared towards building a strong and representative base of active members. Moreover, our collaborative work with UCLA on the topics of human and civil rights abuses by police and private security will serve as one of the starting points for the Without Rights Campaign.

www.cangress.org

Sisters Of The Road

Sisters Of The Road was founded in 1979 as a non-profit café in response to the residents of the Old Town neighborhood in Portland, Oregon's desire for a safe place for everyone, especially women and children. Our customers wanted to be able to work in exchange for nourishing, low-cost meals and to be treated with dignity. While the café has continued as the heart of our organization for the past thirty years, we have strengthened our systemic change model of operation that shares power and uses community organizing to impact issues important to our customers, such as affordable housing and civil rights. Our community organizer and our Civic Action Group (CAG) are actively involved in local issues related to civil rights, such as Portland's anti-camping ordinance, the use of private security in public safety enforcement, and the voting rights of people without housing. Sisters is widely respected in the local community, and recognized nationally, for its nearly thirty-year commitment to this cause. As a founding member of WRAP, we leverage our history and experience in these areas to help WRAP define its strategies and build a regional movement.

www.sistersoftheroad.org

Street Roots

Street Roots is the leading voice for issues concerning social justice in Portland, Oregon, including homelessness and poverty. Street Roots is a non-profit, grassroots newspaper that assists people experiencing homelessness and poverty by creating flexible income opportunities. Through education, advocacy and personal expression, we are catalyst for individual and social change. Street Roots was born in 1999 as a monthly publication with a handful of volunteers and five vendors. Ten-years later the newspaper is a professional bimonthly publication with more than 200 vendors. Street Roots also published 40,000 English and 5,000 Spanish language guides called the Rose City Resource. The guide is an 80-page pocketsize guide to services available to individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty throughout the Portland region.

www.streetroots.org