Unemployed computer operator Robert Ragland, who makes his home most nights in a parking garage, owns three tools for coaxing dollars from the pockets of pedestrians. Inside his tattered black coat Ragland, 41, pins two work badges. One, No. 298, authorizes him to sell StreetWise, the ubiquitous homeless-hawked newspaper. A second nametag identifies him as vendor No. 18 of I.d magazine, the upstart competitor to StreetWise. The third tool is a plastic cup from McDonald’s.
Like hundreds of other homeless Chicagoans, Ragland signed on at StreetWise lured by the offer to pocket 75 cents from every $1 sale. While Ragland says the deal has helped him earn cash, self-esteem and a respite from drug use, eight months on and off selling the paper haven’t helped him secure a permanent home nor job. Which might be why Ragland-and most of the original staff of StreetWise-broke ranks to form Project I.d, a magazine and program its leaders believe can succeed where StreetWise, they say, has failed.
But as Ragland’s plastic cup attests, neither scheme guarantees relief from the toil the homeless call “the trail.”
Can buying the newspaper help its needy vendor? Or does it unwittingly foster drug use, joblessness and homelessness? Is it a hand up or a hand out? These questions ignited the fires of Chicago’s newest circulation war.
StreetWise started as the vision of Judd Lofchie, a Chicago lawyer and real estate developer active in homeless causes. He figured the concept of Street News, sold by New York City’s homeless, could work in Chicago. In January 1992, he persuaded Casey Covganka, a member of his church, to take on the job. Her qualifications: 17 years in the Chicago Tribune’s ad sales department, an itch to switch careers and a heartfelt desire to help.
Covganka ran the project from a desk in Lofchie’s offices, later moving to a South Loop building that had done time as a theater and nightclub. When Dave Whitaker, entertainment editor of the Chicago Suburban Times in Des Plaines, showed up for a volunteers meeting, he and a friend were dubbed editors on the spot. Swept up in the atmosphere of idealism, Whitaker, scrub-faced and 26, soon quit his job and reported to StreetWise full time. Like all staff members-except the sales force-he went without a regular salary until last January.
Covganka swapped ad space for computer time at Kinko’s Copies, where graphics designer Augustine Janairo Antenocruz laid out the paper. The group staged a benefit, clearing enough to cover the first press run. They set up a card table on the sidewalk to recruit vendors, who pledged to remain sober and courteous on the job. Each received 10 free papers and the option to buy more at 25 cents each. The 75-cent profit was theirs to keep.
In August, the “preview issue,” dedicated to “empowering the homeless through employment,” hit the street. It was instantly popular, inspiring 375 poor and unemployed Chicagoans to move 60,000 copies in the first five weeks.
A mix of conservative entrepreneurism and New Age philosophy, the paper sells the idea that the homeless simply need a job. Given that “second chance,” the needy will be “empowered” (one of Covganka’s favorite words) to help themselves. “We can be a catalyst for that chain of events,” says Covganka, 40. “You can change your mindset from `I’m homeless, I’m helpless,’ to `I’ve got this job, I’m a small-business man.’ “
That alchemy worked for Daniel Jackson, 38, who returned from Operation Desert Storm sick, broke and out of work. After treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol abuse at the North Chicago Veterans Administration hospital, he took to spending his days on the street and his nights on the “L.” Last October he heard about StreetWise.
“When I came here, I had no pennies,” says Jackson with the fervor of a true believer. “They said, `Go for it.’ And guess what? I went for it. In three weeks I got this car (an ’82 Ford Fairmont), and I used this car to sell more copies of StreetWise and look for a job.” Selling upwards of 300 copies a day, Jackson earned the title of top salesman for the paper and eventually was hired as director of vendor services and distribution. StreetWise, he says, “is my blessing from heaven.”
StreetWise now claims nearly 1,600 vendors and monthly circulation of 145,000 (Chicago magazine’s circulation, for comparison, is 200,000). But as the project grew, so did editor Whitaker’s doubts.
Were the homeless vendors using the experience as a steppingstone to a better life? he wondered. Or does hawking papers (most vendors report incomes of $26 a day) simply keep the down-and-out in sandwiches, spare change and room at fleabag hotel? Can street sales be considered job training? Or is StreetWise no more than a tin cup fashioned from newsprint? Worse yet, is instant access to cash, few strings attached, a drug addict’s worst enemy? “I felt we were becoming part of the homeless cycle we were preaching against in the paper,” Whitaker says.
“Their mission is to empower the homeless,” says Lisa Nigro, 32, founder of the Inspiration Cafe, a restaurant for the homeless in Uptown. “But they’re also enabling drug abusers.”
According to a 1991 report for the state Department of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, an estimated 43 percent of the homeless are in need of alcohol- or drug-abuse treatment. Some advocates place the figure much higher. “I feel like StreetWise is helping me,” says Derrick Linwood, 34, who distinguishes himself from three other StreetWise vendors outside Marshall Field’s on State Street by alternately selling New City, a free weekly, for $1. “It’s helping me keep up my habit.”
Linwood says that on the days he sells the paper, he can earn enough to buy four or five $10 rocks of crack cocaine. “StreetWise dragged a lot of people down,” he says. “It made them more alcoholics than they were before.”
Beyond employment
To avoid fueling addictions, Nigro says, employment opportunities should be coupled with careful case management, drug rehabilitation services and health care. But that line of reasoning has fierce opponents.
“It seems to me when people earn their money they ought to be able to do what they want with it, even if it’s negative,” says Mimi Harris, social worker and outreach worker at Ezra Multi-Service Center, a not-for-profit social service facility associated with the Jewish Federation of Chicago. “There are a lot of cocaine addicts at the stock exchange, we don’t tell them what to do with their money.”
Whitaker, Antenocruz, 27, and development director Tim Lyne, who himself had drifted seven years without an address, lobbied for more vendor services. They also had editorial differences with Covganka, who was shifting the paper’s focus to more upbeat reading.
The conflict errupted at a February staff meeting. When it was over, Whitaker, Lyne, Antenocruz, distribution director Miguel Lacy, 27, and volunteer bookeeper Tina Phillips, 39, quit, or were fired, depending on who’s telling the story. Then, public records show, the renegades attempted-but failed-a hostile takeover of StreetWise.
Forty-five days later, on April 15, I.d (for identity) magazine appeared, making publications sold by the homeless the fastest growing medium in town. “It does makes you wonder whether the city can support two homeless papers, when the public had a hard enough time accepting one,” says Brooks Whitney, 25, a writer who switched allegiance.
I.d is a tabloid-sized monthly, staffed by the five defectors, written by former StreetWise free-lancers and sold by the homeless for $1 at 75 cents profit. “Imitation,” Covganka points out, “is the sincerest form of flattery.” I.d’s staff contends that there are important differences.
“The project is about helping individuals, not selling papers,” Whitaker says. “The paper is just a way to get people in the door.”
Services at I.d
Inside the 12,500-square-foot former warehouse in Bucktown, vendors find more of a Clinton-style program, based on the notion that the homeless need a variety of social services, not just a job, to get back on track. The staff requires job applicants to go through a one-on-one intake interview, check in weekly and work toward a series of goals. A list of other agencies directs the homeless to help. I.d has grander plans: free health screenings, dental checkups, job training, GED workshops, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
“If someone says he’s staying on the street, you can’t just say, `Well, go sell the damn paper,’ ” Whitaker says. “You get on the phone and find them a place to stay, if that’s what they want.”
Covganka finds that kind of hand-holding condescending. “(Our) idea is to get people out of the cycle of dependence on an organization,” she says.
Vendors trickle through I.d headquarters to pick up their daily load and head for a designated territory. It’s a system built to spare passersby the compassion fatigue that plagues StreetWise vendors arrayed two to a block in the Loop. In the center of I.d’s vast headquarters, racks of donated clothing form a thrift store, manned by former vendor Cardell Murdock, 45. At the makeshift coffee shop, volunteers and vendors can mingle over 25-cent cups of brew. “We don’t offer free coffee,” says Lyne, who encourages his sales reps to learn to budget. “Nothing else in life is free.”
Distinctions fading
Vendors are permitted to sell both products, but not at the same time. So far, only about 40 have taken up the offer. “You’ve got to get personal with people,” Lyne says. “Too many people defeats the purpose.”
And there’s the catch. The limited number of sales reps, 43, did not generate enough income to keep Project I.d afloat. And without grants or corporate backers, I.d is sinking fast. A benefit funded the first 45,000-copy print run.
The second issue, scheduled for May 15, has been postponed until I.d can drum up financial support. “How can we help others when we have the same needs?” Whitaker asks. Like paying rent on no salary.
Lacy is recruiting more vendors, further blurring the distinction between the two groups. And while I.d has yet to implement many components of its service program, StreetWise recently hired an executive director to do precisely that.
StreetWise vendors with the program can drop in for weekly health screenings, psychiatric counseling and 12-step meetings. Which may reduce the most obvious distinction between the groups to the 25-cent cup of bad coffee at I.d versus the free cup of bad coffee at StreetWise.
