Founded in Spring, 2005, the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) is a coalition of west coast social justice-based homelessness organizations determined to make ending homelessness a national priority. Check out their new Blog- Click here. More below.

Report - Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures

November 14, 2006, WRAP released a report that documents how more than 25 years of federal funding cuts to affordable housing have created the contemporary crisis of homelessness and near-homelessness.  The report documents the correlation between radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), and the emergence of the massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today.  It also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.

Click here to download the report.

Click here to read the local Press Release.

Click here to download the national press packet.

WRAP Blog:

http://wraphome.blogspot.com/ This blog is a forum in which WRAP’s members and allies -­ all social justice based organizations working on homeless and poverty issues on the west coast and at the national level -­ can publicize the connections between their local work and the national systemic issues that have created and sustained mass homelessness.

WRAP’s goals are to counter the federal government’s media monopoly on the issues of homelessness and poverty, to show that their characterization of homelessness as a result of the dysfunctions of individuals is false, and to show that the real issues are systemic and societal.  We are all in this together, and we can only solve this if we work together.

More about WRAP

From a perspective that is grounded on the experiences of those who live with and work on homelessness issues every day, WRAP strives to influence the shaping of public policies that address the systemic causes of poverty. WRAP was formed to hold the federal government accountable to the needs of homeless and poor people in our communities.  Sisters joined WRAP’s efforts in 2006 and is very excited to partner with them.

WRAP’s positions

What keeps this country from ending homelessness?

• Federal funding for affordable housing and for health care, education and employment initiatives that would prevent and eliminate homelessness have been drastically cut
• The number of homeless people has risen to over 3.5 million, including 1.3 million children
• The time to organize and demand protection of our human rights and dignity has surely come.

We are immersed in a national dialogue that uses medical terminology like “chronic” to describe persons trapped in long-term poverty.  This “victim” blaming and deficit language undermines, and underestimates, the health, power and vibrancy of the grassroots movements to end poverty and homelessness.

WRAP Coalition members

Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency - Berkeley, CA. www.self-sufficiency.org Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco, CA Los Angeles Community Action Network - Los Angeles, CA. www.cangress.org Real Change - Seattle, WA. www.realchangenews.org Sisters Of The Road - Portland, OR.  www.sistersoftheroad.org Street Spirit American Friends Service Committee - Oakland, CA. www.thestreetspirit.org Coalition on Homelessness - San Francisco. www.cohsf.org

Click the ‘read more’ link below to learn more about WRAP . . .