WRAP 2018 Plan of Work

Engage in a movement to end local governments’ abilities to create and enforce discriminatory laws by overturning laws aimed at removing poor and homeless people from public space.

Fight for the Homeless Bill of Rights (HBR) Campaign in California, Colorado and Oregon.

• Continue street outreach/surveys of homeless individuals in all states and areas to continuously inform our campaign and our organizers.
• Continue Groundbreaking Research and publish and disseminate the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) report from UC Berkeley Public Policy Clinic.
• Consolidate into one report all anti-homeless law research/vagrancy law reports that use WRAP methodology (CA, CO, OR and WA)
• Continue to connect political artists and organizers to create artwork to support anti-criminalization campaigns.

Build awareness and allies to fight criminalization

• Provide presentations/dialogues in various communities regarding WRAP’s research; find out what is happening in their communities
• Increase endorsers/collaborators for the HBR Campaign; activate current endorsers
• Provide as much public education about criminalization in as many ways and to as many communities as possible
• Write for various publications, especially street newspapers
• Provide easy to use fact sheets based in WRAP research

Develop legal strategy and support lawsuits, legal actions, to fight criminalization and violence against homeless people across the country

• Support WRAP core member Denver Homeless Out Loud and the homeless people’s class action lawsuit against the City of Denver for confiscation and destruction of homeless persons’ property—often all they have in the world—without due process or concern for their civil rights. In 10-degree weather, it is cruel and unusual punishment to take people’s clothes and other items that protect them.
• Act as the lead organizational plaintiff in a Bay Area lawsuit against the police seizure and destruction of personal property of people who are homeless.
• File and follow-up on a complaint with the California Attorney General to investigate multiple violent vigilante incidents against homeless individuals in Humboldt County and elsewhere.

Support organizations and individuals working on Homeless Bill of Rights campaigns in their respective states as they contact us.

Continue to engage and consult with the national Homes-not-Handcuffs campaign led by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and National Coalition for the Homeless.

Demand addressing homelessness and poverty from a systemic, social-justice perspective of addressing racism, classism, and massive inequality.

Update and disseminate Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures, WRAP’s groundbreaking report and organizing manual, that has been downloaded more than 40,000 times from WRAP’s website.

Provide accurate data to organizers, activists and local policy makers on federal housing cuts and their implications on our communities.

Support the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival