OXNARD : Publication Is Called ‘Voice’ of the Homeless

Five hundred copies of The Outsider, a newsletter for Ventura County’s homeless, lay neatly folded on Patti Spina’s desk last week.

The 16-page newsletter was not even out of Spina’s grungy office at the Commission on Human Concerns in Oxnard, but she was already thinking ahead to next month’s issue.

“It’s hard work,” said Spina, 24, a recent graduate from Syracuse University in New York. “I didn’t know how involved it would be until I started.”

Spina is the third editor of the newsletter, which began publication under another name, the Street Sheet, on Jan. 17, 1992. Spina calls the songs, poems and opinion pieces sprinkled throughout its pages the “voice of the homeless.”

But even more than a bulletin board for creative impulses, The Outsider has become a useful listing of services available to the homeless, advocates say.

Eight pages in the September issue form a pullout guide that includes extensive listings of food, shelters, showers, medical care and other services available to the homeless.

The listings are updated each month to include shelters that open seasonally and coming events that may aid the homeless, Spina said. The directory also is printed in Spanish.

Spina took over production of the newsletter last fall when former editor Bill Valenteen quit because of poor health. The newsletter’s founding editor, Marin Williamson, left after publishing 11 issues.

Although it started as a weekly, The Outsider has evolved into a monthly publication. The $250 cost of producing each newsletter is paid for with federal grants. It is free and distributed through homeless shelters, soup kitchens and health centers.

Spina is paid a $620 monthly stipend to run the paper through a federal volunteer program. The Commission on Human Concerns allows her to produce the paper out of its office in an industrial area of Oxnard.

The goal is to make the paper self-sufficient through advertising and donations from businesses, Spina said. So far, however, the newsletter has no advertisers.

Spina also hopes to one day have the newsletter produced entirely by homeless people. But she admits that is a lofty idea.

“It’s hard just to get (the homeless) to turn in stories on time,” she said. “Some are drug-dependent, some are illiterate and others are so wrapped up in just getting by day-to-day that they don’t have time for this.”

Bill Alexander, a homeless man from Ventura, is one of several volunteers who help out occasionally, Spina said. He also has contributed to the newsletter.

“Many’s the day I feel just to shine life by just doing nothing because I feel no one cares,” Alexander writes in the latest issue. “What’s wrong with I? What’s wrong with me . . . do I really just want to die? No. I say, just get up and try, try, try.”