DIMANCHE

A new local newspaper will turn spare change into a cover price. Mary Devon-Dupuy reports on a burgeoning organization that will help homeless people, both in print and in the pocket.

New Orleans is rich…in culture. Exceptional live music, vibrant arts scene, and world famous food are just a few of the things that keep people coming into the city and oftentimes making it their new home. Yet, income disparities are vast, and it’s virtually impossible to go one day in the city without encountering at least a few makeshift homes set up under the interstate. Currently, 56 out of every 1000 residents are homeless, and New Orleans has the second highest rate of chronic homelessness in the nation at 61 percent.  There are various nonprofits in the city that offer services to the homeless, but few have found permanent solutions. Betsy Charron, founder of Street Exchange, is interested in fixing the system from the ground up.

Charron earned her Master’s of Public Health from Tulane and decided to apply her education towards reducing New Orleans’ staggering homeless population. Instead of going the usual route in which money is funneled into shelters, soup kitchens, and facilities to house the homeless, Charron wanted to create a program that put all the power in the hands of the individual.

She's planning to launch a new local newspaper that homeless people will sell. The paper, which she hopes to eventually see include articles by homeless writers, offers those involved a “hand-up, not handout,” she said.

Charron isn’t the first to test the idea, and there’s evidence of the program’s success all over the world—from London to Charron’s native Atlanta. The idea gained popularity after New York’s first edition of Street News was distributed in the late 1980’s, and it has proven itself as a means for disadvantaged populations to gain a voice and hopefully a revenue.

“This has really gotten people off the streets in other cities,” Charron said.

Each paper costs $.25 upfront and is then sold by vendors for $1. With a $.75 profit per paper, the organization has the potential to make a dent in the numbers of homeless citizens and hopefully spread consciousness to the homeless community.

“We’re looking at the vendors as micro business owners. We want to give them the tools to move their business forward and give them a voice," Charron said. “It’s that face-to-face interaction between them and the community.”  

The program is broken up into three sections—the vendor outreach program that functions in tandem with the paper make up the first two, and Charron hopes to eventually be able to include the homeless population in the writing process as well. The third subprogram, “Between the Lines,” will eventually function as a writing workshop for homeless people to hone their skills and provide the housed population firsthand accounts of the struggles they face and the solutions they view as most viable.

“We had the idea of having profiles about the homeless; they would write their own, like a personal narrative.”

Charron has a lot of ideas, but the Street Exchange is still working to develop a board and get the structures in place to launch by October. Eventually she wants to “bring New Orleans into the national network of street newspapers.”

“Once we can get that first product, that first paper, then we have something to show people. The paper sales will go toward that, there are some papers in the US that have such large circulation that that makes up a lot of their budget.”

For now, Charron really needs people to get involved and volunteer. If you’re interested in learning the ins and outs of a grassroots organization, you can contact her at her email, betsy.charron@gmail.com.