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WRAP

Western Regional Advocacy Project

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Homeless Bill of Rights

hbrch

Without Housing Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks & Massive Homelessness A Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign Presentation

Download Presentation 
Download Presentation Talking Points

The Homeless Bill of Rights is a grassroots organizing campaign fighting to end the criminalization of poor and homeless people’s existence. The Homeless Bill of Rights campaign strives to ensure that all people have the basic right to live where they choose without fear of harassment and criminalization at the hands of the police. This campaign is a way of working collectively with groups possessing different talents to address the many injustices that we face in our communities. We are building the power to create a social justice movement that will create a society where we can all thrive.

Download the PDF file .

 

The goals and priorities of the campaign come from the results of 1,000s of street outreach surveys to people in various cities being criminalized for sitting, lying, resting, sleeping and eating while poor and/or homeless. The Homeless Bill of Rights campaign includes a legislative strategy to move state legislation, a grassroots organizing strategy to engage organizations through community forums and direct action, a media strategy to create effective messaging across mediums and a legal strategy to backup the organizing with documented legal research.

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The campaign recently shifted its form into 3 autonomous statewide campaigns in California, Colorado and Oregon that work together under the WRAP coalition umbrella. All 3 campaigns share messaging, research, artwork, experiences and strategies but also address the different political contexts and realities in each state.

To learn more about the statewide campaigns, click on the links below:

Right To Rest Act Boilerplate Legislation

campaignmanual

WRAP  Campaign  Manual pfd 
Homeless Bill of Rights Campaign Brochure

endorsments

List of Organizations that have Endorsed the Campaign pfd
New Organizational Endorsement Form pdf 

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Homeless Bill of Rights Fact Sheet pdf
Historical Criminalization Fact Sheet

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NEW Sweeps Form

The preliminary findings from our street outreach to over 1657 homeless people in 16 communities shows:

  • 82% of survey respondents reported being harassed, cited, or arrested for sleeping.
  • 77% of survey respondents reported being harassed, cited, or arrested for sitting or lying on the sidewalk.
  • 75% of survey respondents reported being harassed, cited, or arrested for loitering or hanging out.
  • Only 26% of the respondents said they knew of a safe place to sleep at night.
  • See the full results here: Street outreach fact sheet
  • Observe los resultados aqui: Censo Nacional en Derechos Civiles 

If you would like to add your communities voice to this effort download the forms below, complete the surveys, and send them into us. We will add them to the national results and send you your local & national results.

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   English Form        Spanish Form

English Outreach Form Download
Spanish Outreach Form Download

artwork

Artwork is a crucial part of how WRAP organizes. To see more WRAP art click here.

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Business Improvement Districts | BID’s 

The United States has a long history of using mean spirited and often brutal laws to keep “certain” people out of public spaces and consciousness. Jim Crow, Sundown towns, Anti-Okie laws, Operation Wetback and Ugly laws targeted various populations based on their racial, economic, social, immigration or disability status. Understanding this history will provide context for the exclusionary and discriminatory laws that specifically target homeless people for what are referred to as “Quality of Life” or “Nuisance Crimes.” They criminalize sleeping, sitting, loitering, panhandling and even food sharing. Just like the laws from our past, they deny people their right to exist in local communities. They have their roots in the Broken Windows Theory which holds that one poor person in a neighborhood is like a first unrepaired broken window; if such a “window” is not immediately fixed or removed, it is a signal that no one cares, disorder will flourish, and the community will go to hell in a hand basket.  Today Business Improvement Districts are the “NEW JIM CROW” , the people lobbying local & state government to criminalize the presence of people living under extreme poverty in our country.  

“Downtowns are centers for all kinds of special festivals and activities, as well as locations for retail stores, restaurants, craft brew enterprises and much more. Soliciting outside those businesses that have cast their fate with the success of downtowns is frequently a deterrent to people entering those businesses….”
Karen Horn of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns

Background

Because federal responses to homelessness have been so ineffective, a growing number of localities are using “broken windows” policing to remove homeless people from public view. These punitive measures involve gross human and civil rights violations.

This nationwide pattern has escaped civil rights protections because these ordinances are drafted very carefully to appear as if they apply equally to all people, but enforcement is very much impacted by people’s skin color, housing, economic, and mental health status.

WRAP civil rights campaign combines street outreach, documentation of civil rights violations, organizing, legal defense, and direct action. None of us can do this alone. We must work in solidarity with one another to defend those being attacked and pressure local governments to end these discriminatory programs.

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Register here tinyurl.com/Mumia-film for Thursday Register here tinyurl.com/Mumia-film for Thursday night’s online screening of this moving, informative, personal, important, and artfully-made film. Cast includes Cornel West, Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, Alice Walker, Ruben ‘Hurricane’ Carter, and Amy Goodman.
Forty years ago, the federal government slashed af Forty years ago, the federal government slashed affordable housing budgets of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), marking the beginning of the contemporary crisis of homelessness. https://conta.cc/3k4mDpA
Theatre of the POOR presents CRUSHING WHEELCHAIRS Theatre of the POOR presents CRUSHING WHEELCHAIRS 
Sunday 2/12/23 4pm San Francisco 2948 16th St.
Sunday 2/26/23 4pm Oakland 1540 Broadway 
For more information poormag@gmail.com
One of the questions we asked people we love about One of the questions we asked people we love about this continuing forty-year process of addressing the root causes of homelessness in America was recognizing that our comrade Paul has also been fighting this neoliberal bullshit for forty years. In earlier emails people spoke about the importance of WRAP. Here is what some of our friends had to say about Paul’s role over the last forty years. https://conta.cc/3vbUnUx
Next Thursday, the 22nd, at 11am we are having a p Next Thursday, the 22nd, at 11am we are having a press conference as the preliminary hearings begin and need all our allies to show up and call for justice! https://conta.cc/3FyNtgH
A lot of work done addressing oppressions across t A lot of work done addressing oppressions across the country takes place in courtrooms and legislative bodies. This work is not always successful due to the fact that the oppressors are the ones making the laws. But we know you can’t fight a system if you don’t know the ins and outs of how that system works.  https://conta.cc/3VQrVDl
Join the next Public Works Committee Meeting to re Join the next Public Works Committee Meeting to reject the “safe work zone” ordinance that aims to further criminalize unhoused people and their advocates during sweeps.
Monday, 12/12 at 10:30am
bit.ly/oakmtg-1212
Let's Celebrate Chucho Let's Celebrate Chucho
We are raising $40,000 for WRAP’s vital work at We are raising $40,000 for WRAP’s vital work at this 40-year mark, and all donations will be matched up to $20,000 in November and December! Contribute $40, $400, $4,000 to help make sure that mass homelessness is not around another 40 years. https://conta.cc/3VAWHQ8
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BART oversaw $350,000 Salvation Army program that treated one person, audit finds

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Inspector general reports document alleged wage theft, opaque spending, and one former employee nabbing $2.2 million in BART contracts two m...
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