“It was a big surprise to me because we had been talking about hiring and yeah, I was devastated,” Boone told SFGATE over the phone on Wednesday. “I felt mostly really sad that the community could lose Street Spirit and I wouldn’t be able to hire a new editor and have a seamless transition, and instead would be embarking on this mission to save it.”

It’s not the first time this has happened to Street Spirit. In 2016, the paper’s original publisher, American Friends Services Committee, made a similar decision, saying the paper no longer felt financially feasible. Sally Hindman, co-founder of Street Spirit and then executive director of Youth Spirit Artworks, stepped in to operate Street Spirit in January 2017, Boone said, and the paper was absorbed by the organization. However, the board of Youth Spirit Artworks decided to pull funding for the paper once again in order to focus on their youth offerings, including a tiny house village in East Oakland for unhoused and low-income people. Youth Spirit Artworks’ director of operations, Karini Pereira-Bowers, told Berkeleyside the budget cuts were necessary following the loss of several grants and the resignation of its executive director last year. 

As Boone spearheads fundraising efforts and looks for a new publisher, Street Sheet — San Francisco’s independent street newspaper which was founded in 1989 and is operated by the Coalition on Homelessness — will print extra copies of their publication for Street Spirit’s more than 40 vendors to distribute throughout the East Bay.  

“Now that I have that leeway and know our vendors will be taken care of, I have a little bit of breathing room to look for a new home and raise money to install the paper somewhere else with stability and structure, and the ability to exist and thrive for years to come,” Boone said. 

Street Spirit was founded in 1995 by activists Sally Hindman and Terry Messman, who noticed at the time that the Oakland Tribune had been paying unhoused people to sell copies of their paper, but felt the stories were degrading to unhoused and low-income communities. They aimed to create a publication in which unhoused people could tell their own stories, and Street Spirit eventually “came to be recognized as a radical and efficient and effective way to help provide work and an income to people who need a flexible way back into the workforce,” Boone said. Within its pages are news articles, personal essays, artwork and poetry. Vendors, who buy each copy for a nickel, sell them for a minimum of $2 and keep the proceeds. 

Street Spirit vendor Vernon Dailey told SFGATE he started working with Street Spirit about five years ago, after his wife died of cancer. He inherited her debt and could no longer afford their home in Vallejo, which was repossessed by the state of California. Dailey then got a job with the Berkeley nonprofit Planting Justice, but said it was hard to maintain his social security benefits while working full time. 

“I was broke and lost everything,” he said. “I couldn’t pay the bills by myself, and a friend of mine said, ‘Street Spirit can get you income,’ so that’s how I got started. It helped me to be able to put food on the table, pay some of my bills and be able to go into the store and buy new clothes for myself.”

Dailey is also a contributor to the paper, and said he has written 12 stories about his life, his perceptions on housing issues and more. He’s become a fixture at Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax, Berkeley Bowl West and the Grand Lake Trader Joe’s in Oakland, where he sells the publication and has fostered relationships with regulars. Two of his Street Spirit customers donated a car to him, where he now lives, but he’s still seeking housing. His last article in Street Spirit — for now — is scheduled to be published in its June 1 issue, and he feels optimistic that the publication will live on.  

“I think it’s temporary,” he said. “Of course I feel bad, but I have a feeling it will be back.” 

Boone said she believes preserving the paper is important because it not only gives people with the expertise about an issue to write about their lives and news events that have impacted their communities, but also teaches empathy and changes how stories are told. She encourages people to buy copies of Street Sheet in San Francisco and the East Bay and donate to their relaunch efforts at thestreetspirit.org or by mail by sending a check to the Western Regional Advocacy Project with “Street Spirit” on the memo line.

“Numerous people have said Street Spirit made them feel like somebody after years of being made to feel like nobody,” Boone said. “All of that is incredibly valuable. This is a huge loss and that’s why it’s so important that Street Sheet is stepping in to provide a newspaper for vendors to sell, but it also matters for us to have an East Bay voice. I hope we can relaunch it so that document represents the East Bay.”