By Talia Belowich
@breakyourboundaries, Unsplash
What is a street paper?
Street Papers are a media form that foster community connections and help support those experiencing homelessness by giving them a form of financial autonomy. Each street paper reflects the values and voices of its community, and in that way, they are all largely unique. In this analysis, I will be comparing three different street papers – Street Roots: Portland, The Big Issue: UK, and Homeward Street Journal: Sacramento, and the effects each one has on its respective community.
Street Roots: Portland, OR
Created twenty years ago in Portland, Organ, Street Roots is a street paper with a clear mission. The paper aims to dismantle the barriers of homelessness and unemployment while giving unhoused community members the opportunity to exert their freedom of speech.
Portland has a population of over 666,000 people, making it the 25th most populous city in the U.S. today. Living on the streets in Portland is technically legal. However, bylaws like the Sidewalk Obstruction Ordinance, which criminalizes the act of blocking sidewalks and public businesses, act as a loophole to keep unhoused people off of public property. Furthermore bike racks, a prominent form of anti-homeless architecture in Portland, are strategically placed in areas where the homeless typically reside. The fight for street space between the homeless and the housed who adopt a “not in my backyard” mentality is done within the realm of the law, but that seems to be the only guideline. Ethics has been entirely discarded, along with the belief that people without homes are people too.
The Big Issue: London, UK
The Big Issue has been around for over 30 years and is located in the heart of the United Kingdom. This street paper is just one branch of an international franchise, meaning that it has a wide pool of available resources, and is required to follow the standard rules of a large corporation. The mission of The Big Issue is far more general (and confusing) than Street Roots’, reflecting their large array of projects and their high community involvement.
London has a population of over 9 million people. That’s 13x the population of Portland, thus raising the question: how does a community street journal operate in such a large city? According to The Greater London Chain database, in 2022 just over 8,000 are “sleeping rough” in London, meaning sleeping on the streets and experiencing the most exposing form of homelessness. The Big Issue UK provides a variety of programs catered to their vendors and all people experiencing homelessness in London. While The Big Issue is certainly able to help a greater number of people through its philanthropy and activism, this street paper lacks a community feel that is present in Street Roots and Homeward Street Journal.
Homeward Street Journal: Sacramento, CA
The Homeward Street Journal, located in Sacramento, California, is a branch of the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC). Similar to Street Roots, SHOC’s mission is focused on amplifying the voices of homeless people and providing the homeless community with a platform for free speech. Their mission is clear and concise. However, their mission also reflects their lack of advocacy, partnerships and vendor opportunities. The Homeward Street Journal is focused largely on producing and selling the paper, but does not engage in additional work to end homelessness and support their vendors.
With an overall population of 536,000 and a homeless population of about 9,000, Sacramento has a very similar population statistics to Portland. Much of the city’s homeless population are victims of the worsening housing crisis. According to The Sacramento Bee, the county’s government is doing its part to combat homelessness by providing additional shelters and housing, specifically through the implementation of Project Roomkey. However, in the past few years, Sacramento’s homeless population has seen a 67% increase overall and a 162% increase in the chronically homeless population (those who suffer from long-term homelessness due to disabilities, addiction, etc).
Article Content
The Big Issue has a broad range of issues covered in their content. One unique piece of content is their advice column for people fighting poverty and homelessness, saturated with articles such as “Here’s how to find a food bank near you,” and “Ways to make extra money in the cost of living crisis.” They also write articles on pop-culture news, unrelated to homelessness, such as “How much will the queen’s funeral cost?” This separation from housing and employment content makes The Big Issue less of a community newspaper, and less catered to issues of housing insecurity. Another unique section that they have is Letter to My Younger Self, in which people write advice and messages to their younger selves. This is similar to Street Root’s website section that features vendors and their individual stories.
This is an example of a recent article in The Big Issue’s music section. This has no relation to issues of homelessness or public wellbeing. Their content is not catered to social activists or the homeless population; rather, they write articles for everybody on a variety of topics.
Street Roots’s articles focus mostly on public housing and social justice issues. The article, “city contractors swept homeless portlanders during state of emergency” is geared towards a public audience by keeping community members informed and encouraging advocacy.
Homeward Street Journal‘s articles have a similar effect to those of Street Roots, in keeping the public informed. Mostly focused on community events and public service announcements, the articles are on topics like the 2022 Sacramento Summit. The Homeward Street Journal portrays Sacramento homelessness as an issue propagated by local regulation and authority, evident by the paper’s call for protests and retaliation. There are also many announcements on their website about office hours, reflecting the small-town energy of the paper.
Street Roots Article Discusses Public Health
Homeless people have a much higher exposure to illness. Many homeless people already suffer from underlying health conditions like substance abuse, addiction, depression and anxiety. Inadequate healthcare and healthcare inaccessibility only exacerbates these underlying conditions. So, with the onset of COVID-19, homeless people were amongst the most vulnerable populations. Stay-at-home orders were impossible to fulfill, and constant exposure to the public allowed for disease to manifest. By including essential public health information in their articles, Street Roots caters its content not only to the public eye, but to its own homeless community, by discussing how intersectionality exacerbates homelessness.
Policies
The difference in vendor policies greatly reflects each paper’s overall ties with their respective communities. For example, The Homeward Street Journal does not have any information on their website about their vendors. This reflects a lack of relatability and humanity towards their vendors and the unhoused population they are trying to help.
Street Roots makes being a vendor easy and achievable by requiring a one-time 45 minute orientation, which they offer weekly. Vendors receive ten free papers to sell following their orientation, and then purchase each additional paper for $0.25 to sell at $1.00, leaving vendors with a profit of $0.75 plus any tips that they are given. This is not a large profit, but vendors are able to keep any and all tips that they make. Street Roots does its best given the size of Portland and the resources available to pay their vendors and help the homeless community in Oregon.
Meanwhile, for The Big Issue, becoming a vendor requires an induction process and initial assessment to familiarize vendors with the organization and discuss what they may need out of the Big Issue. The vendors work together with a paper representative to create a plan of action, which is revised every three months and followed up by an outcome assessment/progress review. This system is a lot more formal than Street Roots. This thorough process may benefit the vendor by providing them additional support. It also reflects the rigid policies that come from being a part of an international franchise. Vendors at The Big Issue buy each paper for 1.50 euros, and sell for double that amount, leaving them with a total of 1.50 per paper sold. This is double the amount of money earned by Street Roots vendors and, again, is indicative of the resources available to a larger company.
Advocacy & Partnerships
All three street papers engage in significant advocacy work, made possible by their partnerships with other organizations. To start, Street Roots has the Orange Fence Project, a database unique to the street paper that keeps track of police sweeps. In the database, Street Roots logs the location and date of the sweep, the number of people affected, and the number of tents removed. The database also includes articles written by homeless people affected by the sweeps. The Orange Fence Project was implemented to improve public understanding of homelessness. This program helps to differentiate Street Roots from the other papers by catering the paper to a specific issue faced by Portland’s homeless community. Street Root’s partnerships also differentiate the paper. Street Roots partners with Portland Street Response, a program dedicated to the mental health and behavioral impacts of homelessness. This is the only paper out of the three that addresses mental health issues in such a prominent way. Predictably, The Big Issue UK’s partnerships are highly organized and established. They divide their advocacy work into six main sections: Media, Invest, Shop, Foundation, E-Bikes, and Recruit. The Foundation section entails all of their vendor services and opportunities that I mentioned above. The Media section entails selling the papers. The invest section involves investing in enterprises and charities that fight hopelessness. Shop is a collection of sustainable and ethical brands that promote financial stability. Recruit is a job database, to help vendors with their search for employment. The wide range of services The Big Issue offers is indicative of their broad and general mission statement. This street paper tries to combat homelessness and poverty in the UK in whatever way possible, whether that’s by helping individual vendors, engaging in advocacy work, or investing in charities. The Homeward Street Journal is also involved in a wide range of partnerships. They support the Homeless Action Committee, which gives homeless people a say in housing policies, the Civil Rights Project, which seeks to make living outside legal in Sacramento, and the Sacramento Housing Alliance, which advocates for affordable housing.
Vendor Opportunities & Support
The Big Issue, likely due to its high access to resources, undoubtedly has the most programs to aid and assist their vendors. In correspondence with their thorough induction and review process, the paper offers a wide range of opportunities to meet the immediate and long-term needs of their vendors. The Big Issue’s Financial and Digital Inclusion program teaches vendors to engage with technology in an increasingly digital world. Specifically, the paper helps vendors apply for IDs, start bank accounts, and use Venmo and other cash apps. While street papers aren’t traditionally a modern media form, implementing updated programs like these help unhoused community members stay up-to-date and engaged in a technologically-forward world. A similar program called Breakthrough assists 18-24 year olds in building a social media career by helping them curate industry skills and offering them a platform. The Big Issue UK also offers job placement services, employment opportunities, and peer mentoring programs. All of these are highlighted and described on their website. The Homeward Street Journal offers an impressive amount of services considering the size of their organization. They offer vendors portable bathrooms with hand-washing facilities, and are in partnership with Loaves & Fishes, an organization that provides breakfast, survival items, and lunch baskets to those in need. They also partner with the Salvation Army Sacramento to do a drive-thru food pickup. The Homeward Street Journal offers basic necessities like food, water, and cleanliness. However, there is no long-term support for its vendors, as they lack employment services. Street Roots lacks fundamental services, providing its vendors with coffee and poetry groups, but not food or employment services.
Web Design
Street Roots‘ website is definitely my favorite. Visually appealing and easy to navigate, Street Root’s website includes all of the necessary information, without overwhelming the reader. They include a hyperlink to archives of all of their past papers, categorized by date with a picture of each newspaper cover. This makes their content highly accessible. Furthermore, Street Root’s website includes a document called “Know Your Rights,” which outlines rights that homeless people have when stopped by the police.
Furthermore, each Street Roots vendor has an individual profile page with a headshot, fun fact, and message that they want the world to know. Vendor Makavalie’s page includes that he designs his own clothes and that he wants to be an example by motivating people to not only talk about issues of homelessness, but take action and do something in their own communities. This section of the website makes the vendors, and the homeless community in general, far more personable. It also supports Street Root’s mission of giving homeless people a voice, starting with their own vendors.
The information on the Homeward Street Journal‘s website is not accessible for potential vendors looking to get involved and sell. Furthermore, by omitting this essential information, it weakens the credibility of the paper, and the desire of community members to buy from the organization. The Homeward Street Journal’s website is a sector of the SHOC’s website. It includes a list of past paper archives and is easy to navigate but not visually appealing. They use blurry pictures and outdated information, and refer largely to accomplishments from 2016.
The Big Issue‘s website is visually appealing but difficult to navigate. Reading more as an online newspaper than a generic website, it includes large pictures that link to articles. The website also includes information about the organization’s vendors, policies, and programs.
So… Are Street Papers Redefining Homelessness?
What is a community?
A community is a group of people tied together with a common interest or goal. Community members are meant to uplift one another, however this is often not the case. When considering the academic community, there is a large emphasis on collaboration through exchanging resources, but there is an even bigger emphasis on competition: just think of the college admissions process! Sure, high school guidance counselors, financial aid, and scholarships exist to aid us, but when it comes down to it, there are only a certain number of spots for each school and it is up to each student to obtain theirs. This philosophy parallels unto the homeless community as well. While many cities implement support programs, and while many people converse about wanting to make change, the not-in-my-backyard philosophy often mutes the positive action. Communities are meant to draw people together. But, at the end of the day, they are made up mostly of people who prioritize themselves and their loved ones.
Initiatives like street papers change the narrative of who homeless people are. The Big Issue offers aid to their vendors and engages in advocacy work to help support London’s homeless population. They also implemented a Linkedin program to increase the positive visibility of homeless people. Homeward Street Journal practices giving their vendors a voice and some financial autonomy. Street Roots integrates their vendors into the Portland community through coffee and poetry groups. So yes, the competitive aspects of community are damaging to those who lack financial and social support. But it is the collaborative aspects of communities, like street papers, that lift homeless people up. By supporting your local street paper and buying from vendors, you are redefining what it means to be homeless. You are acknowledging that these vendors have potential and something to offer, that they are a fundamental part of the community worthy of a job and a life.
Works Cited
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