Rudy Torres walked up and down the stairs and couldn’t stop checking outside the door. He was in charge of distribution and the delivery van with the latest issue of Street Sheet was late.
The venders were already waiting inside the Coalition on Homelessness for the new issue. Some of them began to doze off.
Every time Torres would step into the office, the venders would assumed that the paper arrived and would get out of their seat to help unload the van. But Torres would just walk back out, and the venders knew the paper was still not here.
Finally, Torres shouted from downstairs.
“The paper is here!”
Everyone from the office began going downstairs. They formed a line from the door all the way up through the stairs. They looked like they were a disaster relief organization, but instead of carrying sand bags upstairs, they were carrying bundle of newspaper.
The Street Sheet is a well-known newspaper of San Francisco that brings news on homelessness to the people. What’s more important is that homeless people known as a way for them to make money sell the publication. Those who are homeless and want to sell Street Sheet are briefly trained to become a vender before going out.
But today, there is something extra for the venders. Harmonic Humanity, a non-profit organization founded by Al Lovewinds that is using music to help the homeless, are giving every vendor two music compilation CDs made by the organization for them to sell. Harmonic Humanity has teamed up with the street newspaper in Seattle to allow the homeless to sell CDs on the street so they can make more than a $1 per newspaper. The CDs would cost the vendors $2 to purchase, but they would get to sell it for $10.
“We are trying to create a win situation,” said Joseph Jacques, the co-founder of Harmonic Humanity. “This helps both organizations.”
The CDs are made by variety of artists who donate the song to help start this project. The organization put together a fundraiser and raised enough money to print 1,000 copies. Merging with the newspaper in Seattle has been satisfying enough for the organization to try San Francisco.
Both Lovewinds and Jacques felt since many cities has newspapers that concentrate on homelessness and also help the homeless in the city, it’ll be a good move to team up with much publications as they can so they can address the issue of homelessness across the country.
Jacques said that they hope they can put a few well-known artists in the next compilation album. They are hoping to have Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz to contribute.
There are roughly 200 different vendors over the course of three month that would pick up Street Sheet from the coalition to sell. They come sporadically to pick up the bi-weekly newspaper. They are allowed to pick up 25 to 75 issues each time to sell.
Bob Offer-Westort is currently the coordinating editor for the Street Sheet. He has different writers volunteer to write each issue and he’ll put the issue together himself.
The budget for the paper is relatively inexpensive. The only thing that is a cost is the printing, which cost $1,600. Most of the money comes from people who want to see the paper up in running. The other contributions are from small foundations.
When asked whether Street Sheet is going in the direction of trying to combine other sources like Harmonic Humanity to hopefully expand the paper, Offer-Westort said that organization like these just happens to fall from the sky.
“We are still going to focus strictly on bringing the news on homelessness out in San Francisco,” Offer-Westort said. “When organization like this give us a hand, it’s great. The only expansion that should be made would be getting more
articles in the newspaper.”
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