A paper you may not have heard about….

There’s this woman that I hear before I see in Dupont Circle almost everyday. She awaits you at the top of the escalator as you are exiting the Metro. Her familiar call can be heard from 19th Street down to the depths of the escalator tunnel. It goes “purchase a copy of Street Sense eyahh! “Help the homeless help themselves, Street Sense!”

She repeats this line throughout the morning while gaining a patron every now and then. This vendor of  a street newspaper, has got to be one of the most determined and hard working people I know—although I have to admit her routine can be monotonous. Who else would stand out there for hours on end, no matter the weather to sell a paper? After all, long gone are the days of the newspaper boys standing on street corners.

All of the vendors, most of them homeless, put in a lot of effort to sell this  street newspaper. They get to keep most of the money from its sale. It’s a way for the homeless to help themselves. Street Sense not only empowers the homeless financially by having them be vendors of the paper; it also provides them with a voice as a lot of the content in the paper is written by homeless people.

Yet all of this effort by the vendors of the paper has me thinking, why doesn’t an employer also see this determination? Just think, if any one of these vendors were able to get a basic retail job or work at a grocery store; they would be making a lot more than they do selling the paper. I know that some of the homeless who sell Street Sense are able to move on to more a more steady source of income, but there are others who stay on as vendors for a very long time. Street Sense is working to get their vendors hired by the way. I’d suggest people give them a look.

Today I bought a copy of Street Sense here in DC and read about a rather disturbing trend. That trend is the rise in homelessness and it’s criminalization by cities around the country. In the article there was one fact that I also wanted to share.

During one eleven-month period, Los Angeles spent $3.6 million repeatedly prosecuting 24 homeless individuals. For the same amount, according to the Lewin Group, a management research consultancy, the city could have provided housing for over 350 people.

Now isn’t that amazing? That is absolutely shocking! I wonder how many homeless people does the District of Columbia have? It makes you wonder what could be done here.

Top Ten Meanest Cities:

1. Los Angeles, CA
2. St. Petersburg, FL
3. Orlando, FL
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Gainesville, FL
6. Kalamazoo, MI
7. San Francisco, CA (that liberal bastion! Say it ain’t so!)
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Bradenton, FL
10. Berkeley, CA (another liberal enclave?!! Wow it’s like Cambridge, MA!)