San Francisco Paper Covers Grim Lives of Homeless

The strategy sessions take place at papers nationwide, where discerning top editors gather to decide how to play the news: what’s worthy of the front page and what gets buried among the used-car ads.

But this editorial tete-a-tete is different. Inside a cluttered office in the destitute Tenderloin district, half the decision-makers slouched around a conference table drinking coffee are survivors of an often-fatal urban disease -- they’ve been homeless. And could be again.

There are two bald guys -- one by choice, the other with only nature to blame. Nearby, a man coddles his 2-year-old son as the woman beside him curses like a convict. A woman flashes midnight-blue nail polish and a tattooed bilingual greeting on her right forearm that reads “hola hey.” Another with magenta- and flame-streaked hair brandishes a decidedly loaded nickname: AK-47.

Actually, Anne Kaplan doesn’t have a violent streak. The 48-year-old recalls how someone at an organizing meeting last year asked her name and age -- suddenly announcing “Hey, you’re AK-47.”

Kaplan and the others are gathered in a sunlit room surrounded by filing cabinets and enough scattered paper to summon the Fire Department.

They’re weighing story ideas for the August issue of Street Sheet, a no-nonsense tabloid focusing on the 15,000 homeless people scratching out existences in one of the nation’s wealthiest cities, where tourists flock to see beautiful bridge and bay views, not unwashed people pushing shopping carts.

The San Francisco version, published by the city’s Coalition on Homelessness, is the longest-running paper of its kind in North America, having not missed an issue since cranking up its presses in 1989.

But the over-caffeinated story plotters consider this record yesterday’s news: New deadlines loom. And there’s a little problem with one of the staff.

“The reporter promised she’d have the story in by noon,” editor Chance Martin explains to the group, “then she dropped off the face of the Earth.”

The footprint of homelessness is different here than in places like Los Angeles, where people tend to cluster around service centers tucked in one corner of downtown. In San Francisco, the homeless have spread to nearly every quadrant.

As people score drugs and endure another day of misery on the street below, Street Sheet staffers hash out coverage of a housing justice summit and the closure of the city’s only shelter catering to Spanish speakers.

Martin details a story on how midtown redevelopment has affected the homeless. Jennifer Friedenbach, the paper’s organizing director, eyes him warily.

“There’s two sides to this story,” she says, suggesting that many advocates for the homeless support the redevelopment. “We need both.”

Martin counters: “But they’re prioritizing parking over low-income housing in an area where only 30% of the people drive.”

The focus turns to the closing of a homeless shelter on Delores Street. The paper has usually kept a good relationship with shelter operators. But that won’t get in the way of news.

“We can cooperate with Delores Street, but at a certain point we should do a story on it no matter how they feel about it,” Friedenbach announces. “Our concerns are with the clients.”

Martin used to be one of those clients. His spiral of descent resembled that of any one of the city’s legions of street-dwellers: One day, he’s making $60,000 a year running a Chicago heating and air-conditioning concern. Then his wife divorces him, setting off a chain of events like tumbling dominoes.

A year later, he finds himself parked at a stoplight, weeping. A prescribed daily cocktail of lithium and Prozac makes his already-manic mind go nuclear. Suffering from severe depression, he heads off to the West Coast on a mission to witness the wild and weird of California before finally jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

He never takes that leap. Instead, he frequents mental hospitals. Then he lands a gig for Street Sheet, eventually becoming editor of a publication that’s part gritty urban journalism and part public relations handout from the perspective of the homeless.

Run by a coalition whose members often work for city aid agencies, Street Sheet publishes 30,000 copies a month. Most are dispensed to street-dwellers, who hawk them for a suggested $1 donation.

The strategy is two-fold: Vendors can make $25 a day without condescending to panhandling as they educate readers on the issues of homelessness.

But like life on the streets, the news is dark. Typical headlines moan: “Another Shelter Closing,” “Service Providers Stave Off City’s Money Grab Attempt” and “The Forgotten Ones.”

As its staff works to make do with a shoestring budget of $25,000 a year, the paper has been unkindly labeled by a local newspaper as a “ubiquitous unread tabloid of the poor.” Although Martin acknowledges the content is grim, he says it’s impossible to sugarcoat the violence, drug addiction and hunger accompanying street life.

Street Sheet has lately lightened its tone with a humor column, but the paper prefers to stick to chronicling conditions of the homeless and strategies they may use to escape the streets. There are no feel-good features about colorful shelter denizens and how they fell through society’s cracks. Most homeless want to keep some semblance of privacy.

“Just because I’m pretty open about being in and out of mental hospitals,” Martin says, “that’s not true for everybody.”

Street Sheet staffers also relish their privacy. A reporter at a recent story meeting was politely asked to leave once the agenda turned to internal issues.

The paper pays $25 a story, but writers come and go with the weather and the size of their Social Security checks. Still, the paper manages to publish, even if Martin and the others at the planning meeting have to do all the work themselves.

Street Sheet has scored scoops on city malfeasance that other papers have followed. But most issues pursue a fine line between the haves and the have-nots, trying to educate, not alienate. Most staffers consider themselves advocates for the homeless first and journalists second.

The paper acknowledges one sacred cow: the homeless themselves. “Every paper seems to have no compunction about portraying homeless people in a negative light, so we don’t go there,” Martin says.

Over 13 years, Martin has shepherded scores of Street Sheets into print. Now, at 50, he’s considering moving on, not so reluctantly leaving behind his $13,000 annual salary to explore property management.

First, there’s the August issue to fret over. And the fate of the vanished writer, who got swamped with her full-time job.

“She’s going to deliver,” Martin says confidently. “She just got caught up with life.”