Editor's Note

By Tim Covi

A couple of months back the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) held its annual conference in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the conference was “Global Collaboration, Real Solutions.” Although the conference largely focused on how street papers could collaborate more, the theme made me think about an initiative that the INSP has been working on for some time—getting world governments, large and small, to fully embrace street papers.

“All of our 108 members are social enterprises,” says Serge Lareault, chairperson of the INSP, “providing employment and consequently transforming the lives of many thousands of disadvantaged people across the globe. Simultaneously we engage millions of readers in issues that are too important to be ignored.” The nature of street papers makes them a great asset to any community.

Reflecting on it, I’m amazed that in the U.S. street papers haven’t been included as an element of 10-year-plans to end homelessness, if not embraced by local governments. These plans, which have been created with varying degrees of success in more than 300 communities in the U.S., outline methods to dramatically reduce homelessness and alleviate its impact on the entire community.

Some 10-year-plans are met with as much cynicism and distrust as they are with fanfare, which makes sense considering that most plans lack funding and never get past the planning phase. They remain plans in word rather than deed.

Others, however, are genuinely working. Denver’s Road Home, our local 10-year-plan to end homelessness, started five years ago. In that time, while homelessness in the metro area has actually increased, without Denver’s Road Home the rate would have been much higher. DRH has created over 1,500 housing units for the homeless, and has networked hundreds of people with job programs and other services.

Around the time DRH was created, laws were passed making it illegal to panhandle in the downtown Denver Business Improvement District, as well as to sit or lie down in the public right of way in the same district.

A street paper like ours, by its very nature, reduces vagrancy and panhandling without the dehumanizing impact of punitive laws. I recently read an article in the Loveland Connection that said since the implementation of Denver’s Road Home, the city of Denver has reduced panhandling downtown by 90 percent. My question is: What would that picture look like without the Denver VOICE?

We provide roughly 150 homeless or impoverished people with a job every month. Most of them work downtown at some point. More than 50 percent of our vendors say that they use income from the VOICE to help pay for housing. We have a job-training program to teach interested vendors skills that translate to multiple careers. And perhaps most importantly, there’s that unquantifiable value of the paper—the job makes our vendors feel valuable to themselves and others. It builds people up and helps them feel like a better life is possible.

Great content paired with a social service. What more could a city want from a paper? My challenge to Denver’s Road Home is to embrace the VOICE completely this year. Help us continue to help Denver. •

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