Western Regional Advocacy Project

Background

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) was founded in 2005 by left-of-center homelessness advocacy and activism groups to promote a narrative that the root cause of most homelessness in the United States is insufficient federal funding for housing programs, dating back to the Reagan administration of the 1980s.  ²

In 2025, its executive director Paul Boden wrote, “Forty years ago, the federal government slashed HUD’s  & USDA’s affordable housing budgets, marking the beginning of the contemporary crisis in homelessness.”  ² Boden argues that “Homelessness is a direct result of the decisions and funding priorities of the federal government, in a larger context of white supremacy and settler colonialism.” ² He also blames “police brutality in the streets; unabashed racism, transphobia, and xenophobia; and dehumanizing, neoliberal policy and funding priorities.” ³

Activism

The Western Regional Advocacy Project operates a variety of campaigns to promote its views on homelessness and advocate decreased policing, fewer restrictions on use of public property by homeless people, and increased funding for housing programs. ^{4  5}

WRAP produces organizing toolkits for activists who oppose efforts by law enforcement agencies to police potential criminal activity by homeless persons. The toolkit includes detailed instructions for staffing and organizing “Street/Community Watch Teams” to document police interactions with homeless people and engage with police on their behalf, including defining roles such as point person, communications person, general support person, videographer, and offsite base person. ⁶

Business Improvement Districts

WRAP is opposed to Business Improvement Districts where local businesses join to improve local maintenance, security, marketing, or other business conditions, which it characterizes as “Homeless Exclusion Districts.” ⁷ It has described them as “neoliberal governance” mechanisms where the “primary purpose is to police poor and homeless people.” ⁷

WRAP has developed campaigns opposing business improvement districts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon. ⁷

Grants Pass Case

In 2024, WRAP submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson, where the Court was asked to determine whether an Oregon city’s municipal ordinances regulating sleeping or camping on public property functioned as “cruel and unusual punishment” against the city’s homeless population.  ⁸

In the brief, WRAP argued that “Homelessness is not a choice. It is a socially-constructed status resulting from policy decisions.” ⁸

The Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the city, rejecting WRAP’s arguments that the ordinances resulted in “the criminalization of basic survival.”  ^{8  9}

Coalition Members

WRAP’s member organizations are the Coalition on Homelessness (San Francisco), Housekeys Action Network Denver, Love and Justice in the Streets (Oakland), Judi’s Midnight Diner (Medford, Oregon), Unhoused Neighbors Union Missoula, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Street Spirit (Berkeley, California), Where Do We Go Berkley, Human Right to Housing Collective (Seattle), and Stop the Sweeps Seattle. ¹