WRAP's second campaign – Without Rights – integrates organizing, legal defense, research, public education, and advocacy to challenge the use of "quality of life" policing programs and separate courts to criminalize and remove homeless and poor people from public spaces.

During the past 20 years, the number of homeless people in the United States has grown to more than 3.5 million individuals while at the same time, federal funding for vital programs that prevent homelessness have been drastically cut. Without federal support to prevent homelessness, local governments have been using law enforcement to address the crisis. Public spaces have been closed, ordinances are passed, and business districts are sponsoring private security to patrol downtown areas and assist police in ensuring that they do not become a magnet for “the homeless”.

These local attempts to deal with homelessness by making homeless people disappear from sight involve gross civil rights violations. Perhaps the most effective way local governments have found to displace individuals is through criminalizing camping, sitting, lying or trespassing on either public or private land. Other methods of displacement include criminalizing panhandling, blocking sidewalks, and possessing "stolen property" such as shopping carts and milk crates. This situation is a violation of civil rights that brings our society no closer to resolving homelessness.

Homeless and poor people, disproportionately cited for these "crimes," often do not attend hearings for infractions because they cannot afford to pay the associated fines or to hire a lawyer. This non-appearance turns the infraction into a bench warrant for failure to appear—a "criminal offense" punishable by up to six months in jail. Because the original offense did not carry a jail penalty, individuals are not entitled to the free representation provided by the Public Defender office, and are forced to represent themselves in a very complex criminal justice system.

WRAP recruits and trains pro bono attorneys to represent poor and unhoused people in court and to work effectively with community organizers doing outreach, direct actions, and street watch documentation. When volunteer legal representation is available at the start of the legal process, the overwhelming majority of quality-of-life citations are dismissed.

There is an unseen but enormous significance to these dismissals. Individuals without housing that have active warrants resulting from minor offenses such as sleeping in public are often prevented from getting the services needed to exit homelessness.

Legal representation safeguards access to services and the civil rights of those who are forced to survive without housing. Community organizing builds the relationships and leadership necessary to impact the broader economic and political forces that present criminalization as a solution to increasing poverty and inequality.

As a regional organization, WRAP is building the campaign infrastructure and capacity to legally defend the civil rights of poor and unhoused people, while working to revitalize a broad based social movement promoting the civil and human rights of all people in the US.