Artists Respond to Homelessness

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) was born in 2005 as a regional collaboration of seven social justice organizations in six West Coast cities.

In 2007, the organization published Without Housing: Decades of Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures.

For anyone interested in reviewing the rise of modern day homelessness, it's a must read. The organization is currently working on putting together an updated second release of the report. To date, 25,000 copies of the report of have been downloaded.

WRAP is also working on its second campaign, Without Rights. The campaign is working to support legal defense programs for people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles and San Francisco while duplicating these models in other communities along the West Coast, including Portland.

The campaign is also publishing a report outlining effective public education and advocacy efforts to challenge the use of "quality of life" policing programs and separate courts to criminalize and remove poor people from public spaces.

Part of the goal of WRAP is to incorporate quality art into its organizing. How could you not? Art can be every bit as powerful as investigative reporting, photography and testimonials being highlighted about homelessness and poverty in America.

Currently, WRAP is partnering with the California Exhibition Resource Alliance and California Historical Society to present, Hobos to Street People: Artists Response to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present. The show is currently being shown in San Francisco, but will be touring the state of California until December of 2011.

Here's the description of the show.

Vagrants, transients, hobos, tramps, and street people-whatever names we have used to describe their particular circumstances, homeless people have been a part of American society throughout the nation's history.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s many artists for the first time in US history began to address issues of human rights. The large number of poor, displaced and homeless people was one important focus. Artists were not only observers, but they actively found ways to influence society through exhibition and distribution of their work.

During the decades following World War II artists shifted their energies elsewhere, but by the late 1970s with the rise of the modern era of mass homelessness many artists again began to focus on what was happening to poor people in our society. Structural changes in the American economy and a return to fiscally conservative ideology began a period of increased poverty and economic inequality.

Over the following decades, the problems contributing to homelessness increased. By 2008, an estimated 3.5 million Americans lived without housing and homeless children in school exceeded 900,000 according to the US Department of Education.

The exhibition presents the work of artists who have sought to bring attention to the tragedy of homelessness.

If you're in San Francisco this summer, it's a must see.

(Artwork by Claude Moller)