For Vicky Batcher, a regular face with and in Nashville street paper The Contributor, simply liking a Facebook page set her on a road toward a roof of her own over her head. For the latest in INSP’s ‘Housing for the People’ column, she writes about the rush of emotions that experiencing safety and security for the first time in years brought her.

Housing for the People: How an affordable apartment changed my life

 in Nashville, Tennessee, receives the COVID vaccines.

With Covid vaccines being rolled out differently across the world, that means marginalised and vulnerable communities in different parts of the world are receiving immunisation at different rates. But it does mean some good news: street paper vendors are beginning to receive the jab, and with the world opening up again, that’s more than welcome.

“Nobody should go without the shot”: Dispatches from vaccinated street paper vendors

Tennessee is Vicky Batcher’s home, and it is a place she is witnessing turn against people who don’t have shelter and must make their home on the street, a position she knows all too well from past experience. In the latest in INSP’s Housing for the People column, she writes about the jarring experience of seeing the place you live criminalize homeless people – people Vicky has a kinship with – as Tennessee will do with the passing of a new law.

Housing for the People: “Tennessee’s anti-homelessness law feels like someone ripping our collective hearts out”

' Marcus Vinicius. Credit: Thaís Mallon.

Everyone who is a part of the global street paper network knows what a street paper is – that extends to the staff that put each publication together and those who buy them. But the people who truly know what a street paper is – what it means – are those who sell them. Here, a collection of street paper vendors – from Greece to Australia – tell us, in their own words, what a street paper is, personally to them.

Tagged with 'the-contributor'

Housing for the People: How an affordable apartment changed my life

“Nobody should go without the shot”: Dispatches from vaccinated street paper vendors

Housing for the People: “Tennessee’s anti-homelessness law feels like someone ripping our collective hearts out”

“It was an opportunity for rediscovery” – what street papers are in the words of those who sell them