Hey Everyone! 
Below are the materials people have asked us to share from our Sanctioned Encampment webinar. Thank you all for your interest in working together to fight back against criminalization and for Human Dignity for ALL people!!!
Sanctioned encampments have been popping up all over the West coast as an “emergency response” to homelessness in the pandemic. Now that COVID-specific funding is running dry, many local governments have proposed making these encampments a formal tier of the shelter system. In this webinar, we will discuss the implications of these encampments as a “service,” namely how they will and are being used to sweep and warehouse unhoused people on the streets, and how they are part of a larger trend whereby local governments fabricate and formalize “service resistance” in order to continue the criminalization of homelessness under Martin v. Boise. 
Shelters & Sanctioned Encampments are NOT Housing: Homelessness Ends WITH a Home
WRAP was created to expose and eliminate the root causes of civil and human rights abuses of people experiencing poverty and homelessness in our communities. We are demanding our rights and fighting like hell for all people (housed & unhoused) to be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. In the past 38 years since the advent of contemporary homelessness, unhoused people have been subjected to an endless merry-go-round of target sub-populations, competitive community plans, and policy flavors. Rather than addressing the root cause of homelessness, the decimation of federal public housing, these policies are aimed at fixing "broken individuals." Clearly, our governments are not choosing real solutions to homelessness– human rights, livable incomes, healthcare, jobs, or a reinstatement of federal affordable housing funding. 
Conceal, Criminalize, Capitalize:
How government sanctioned tent cities promote the criminalization of homelessness under the guise of service
The community of unhoused Oaklanders living at Cob on Wood are anticipating the arrival of bulldozers any day now. Cob on Wood is one of the largest homeless encampments that currently exist in West Oakland, where residents have built their own tiny homes, a community clinic, and even a free commissary. While this beautiful and sustainably built settlement has been heralded in the media as a creative solution to Oakland’s housing crisis, there remains an ever-present threat that Caltrans (the public entity that “owns” the land) will evict everyone living in the encampment and destroy it.

Around the same time that the city issued a “cease and desist” order to the folks at Cob on Wood, Oakland City Council was considering a proposal to give $350,000 to a non-profit to build a city-sanctioned encampment. This is an alarming trend across the US – while encampments created by unhoused people are vilified and violently dismantled, cities are proposing establishing “sanctioned encampments”
Western Regional Advocacy Project | 415-621-2533 | wrap@wraphome.org | www.wraphome.org