Programs like affordable housing are never given. They are struggled for and won by powerful social movements. Our fight for human and civil rights becomes less abstract and overwhelming when we start by identifying local priorities, then make the connections with other communities throughout the region, and then throughout the country.

Over the past two decades, homeless advocacy has happened either through DC-based policy advocates disconnected from grassroots organizing or through locally oriented grassroots organizing disconnected from national policy. In order to build a powerful movement, the national policy agenda must be connected to and driven by grassroots organizing of poor and homeless people. As a regional organization that builds with national and local organizations, WRAP has the power of collective mobilization, while remaining rooted in local communities.

Homelessness results when multiple oppressions intersect. Most notable are institutionalized racism and poverty. Although for women, homelessness may often be related to domestic violence, for undocumented immigrants to unlawful evictions, for poor families to gentrification and public housing cuts, for contingent workers to downsizing, for youth to child abuse, for gay or transgender people to social exclusion, for veterans to war trauma, for mentally and physically disabled people to inadequate health care and treatment.

The public view often sees homelessness as its own special category, unrelated to other categories of oppression. WRAP is working to change that perception and to organize a movement across categories of oppression as part of a united front that works towards human rights and social justice for all.