The Homeless Rights Advocacy Project (HRAP) engages Seattle University School of Law students in effective legal and policy research, analysis, and advocacy work to advance the rights of homeless adults, youth, and children.
HRAP's mission is to:
- Provide law students with intensive, challenging education in the fundamentals of policy research, analysis, and advocacy in the context of homeless rights advocacy.
- Build partnerships across a broad range of disciplines with community members, advocates, academic institutions, and other stakeholders to advance the rights of homeless people.
- Increase access to resources (education, information, communication) to support anti-criminalization advocacy.
- Advocate for the repeal of laws that criminalize homelessness and poverty and for the pursuit of alternatives that better address the root problems of homelessness and poverty.
Seattle University School of Law students are at the core of HRAP. HRAP challenges and advances core lawyering skills in and outside of the classroom and in and beyond our surrounding community.
Service to and collaboration with the greater community is also central to HRAP's mission. HRAP engages in core partnerships at the national, state, and local level.
Professor Sara Rankin, faculty lead for HRAP (pictured at right with the founding cohort of HRAP students), teaches lawyering skills and homeless rights advocacy at Seattle University School of Law. She regularly partners with national and local leaders in homeless rights advocacy and presents across the nation on homeless rights issues. She also blogs and publishes on legal and policy issues affecting homeless people.
