Voice of the Street : Publication: A weekly newsletter speaks to Ventura County’s homeless. A cast of contributors shares their condition.

Deadline looms for the Street Sheet, Ventura County’s weekly newsletter for the homeless, and editor Marin Williamson is still waiting on her centerpiece story.

“It’s an imaginary dialogue between a homeless woman and her daughter-in-law, who happens to be a police officer,” says Williamson, 51, as she pounds on a computer keyboard in the cramped basement of Ventura’s American Red Cross building.

She’s working on a new feature, “Street Person of the Week.” The first installment is a testimonial that she tape-recorded from Bernard Boulanger, a nude model at Ventura College who lives in the Santa Clara river bottom and claims to have founded the Church of Sinners, Saints and Alcoholics.

So far she’s published, among other items, a column by a man known only as J.R. on where to get the best prices for aluminum cans, county nurse Evelyn Burge’s schedule of visits to shelters and soup kitchens, a Spanish-language directory of services, and an assortment of songs, poems and opinion pieces about life on the street.

“This is truly a newsletter for us, our voices speaking out to each other and those who want to hear,” wrote Williamson, a street person until she moved into subsidized housing three weeks ago, in her introductory editorial.

The phone rings. An evangelical church is starting a weekly service at a homeless encampment and wants publicity. “I’ll see what I can do,” Williamson answers.

It’s not easy to get an article printed in the Street Sheet, a highly readable four-page newsletter, now going on its third issue--Williamson has a backlog of at least a dozen stories.

Feeding the Street Sheet is a cast of contributors whose only common denominator, it appears, is their homeless condition.

All day, they walk in and out of Williamson’s office--dropping off stories, picking up paychecks, sorting through a pile of donated clothes.

Some are carefree and blase about their fate, others anguished and distraught; still others are eternally hopeful despite the scars. Some are highly educated, others nearly illiterate.

Alan, an introspective handyman who lost his job with a utility in Sacramento six months ago, asks angrily in an opinion piece, “Does anybody know the dimensions of the homeless problem? Does anybody care?”

Alan--”no last names please, I’m looking for a job”--doesn’t like most of his fellow homeless.

“A lot of them are loonies, they need serious help,” he whispers, nodding toward his peers at a soup kitchen. “Homelessness is as much an attitude as it is an economic situation. A lot of people get typecast as homeless and end up getting used to it. They spend more time learning the easiest way to get by than trying to get a job.”

Denise Chapman, a sensitive, wide-eyed maintenance worker at Zoe Christian Center, writes about a cat: “I thought it was bad being in the shelter and eating the food, but Jack sleeps in the cold every night and eats only when cat donations show up or someone donates their leftovers to him.”

Chapman, a ninth-grade dropout and recovering crack addict, is working on a novel called “Me and My Cardboard Box.” “I want to be like Stephen King!” she blurts out, giggling. With the book’s profits, she says, she plans to open a homeless shelter.

Boulanger, 64, refuses to be labeled homeless. “I’m a vagabond and a wanderer,” he playfully protests. Today, he is wearing a colorful Mexican sombrero. A compass, a cross and a day-glo stick hang from his neck. He smiles all the time and flirts with the editor to the point of making her blush. He carries a leather suitcase with a tag that reads, “Street Sheet Roving Correspondent.”

Boulanger’s philosophy of life: “What happened five minutes ago is past, gone, finished, wiped out.”

Burge, the nurse, also drops in and is happy to report that she has given almost four times as many AIDS virus tests since her column started to appear in the Street Sheet.

The newsletter started with a $1,000 donation by a married couple, Tim Downey and Mary Day--enough to pay Williamson’s salary for the first four editions.

“It was merely a contribution to help the newsletter along,” says Downey, vice president of EnviroTech, a Ventura recycling company. He hasn’t gotten around to reading the newsletter, and he doesn’t really care how the homeless spend his money. He’s just happy to help out. “I always felt you should give a little back if you can,” he says.

The Red Cross pitched in with an office, the computer and about $40 a week, which the editor uses to pay her contributors. Writers of big features earn $20, others get $5 or $10.

The printing is done for free at Coastal Printing, and the 1,000 copies of the paper are distributed at the usual homeless hangouts in Oxnard and Ventura: The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Zoe Christian Center, Emergency Warming Shelter and the Commission for Human Concerns. Newspapers and elected officials get the newsletter too.

In the dimly lit Red Cross basement, where Williamson shares space with a pile of old radios and communication equipment, the editor glances at her watch--11:25 a.m. A Ventura Avenue soup kitchen opens in five minutes. Williamson, who has college degrees and formerly worked in a professional field, is among the first to arrive.

Today’s menu is beans, lettuce and cake, all served in Styrofoam boxes. About 80 people show up. Standing in the food line, Williamson spots Rosemary, the mother-in-law of the police officer. Rosemary looks pale and disgusted. “Where’s the article?” Williamson asks.

“I had a terrible day,” Rosemary replies. “And I don’t have the article.” Williamson shrugs and walks away, carrying her Styrofoam box. She finds a seat next to Alan, and over lunch they discuss the day laborer situation in Moorpark.

Throughout the meal, a few people recognize Williamson and compliment her on the newsletter. “I really like it,” says car dweller George Hall. “I’ve picked up a lot of insights.”

Suddenly a fight breaks out. An enraged Latino wearing a black Jean-Claude Van Damme T-shirt accuses Alan of making racist comments and throws his beans at him. He’s wrong--Alan was denouncing racism--but nobody can make the angry man listen.

He walks up to Alan, threatens to kill him, and punches him in the face. Alan doesn’t respond. A group of volunteers steps in and hustles the troublemaker away.

Williamson sighs. “What a weird day,” she finally says.

She returns to her office carrying three new entries for the Street Sheet’s logo contest.

Nobody knows what will happen after this week’s issue, when Williamson’s stipend runs out.

But hardened by 12 long months of sleeping in her car, she doesn’t seem particularly concerned.

“When I started this, I thought it was an idea whose time had come,” she says, shrugging. “If we don’t get money to keep it going, it means the idea was inappropriate and I’ll happily pull my tent and go elsewhere.”

If the printer is willing to shoulder the cost of another issue or two, she says, she might stick around and work for free.

Right now, she’s only worried about today.