A Tough Sell: Stigma as Souvenir in the Contested Performances of San Francisco's Homeless Street Sheet Vendors

Abstract

The San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness’ newspaper, the Street Sheet, is one of the nation's longest-running homeless newspapers. The Coalition's unique “business model” has served as an example for other “street newspapers” worldwide. In this model, homeless persons are entrusted to sell the newspaper on the street, keeping most of the profits for themselves. Using ethnographic data and document analysis, this essay frames the newspaper's vending interactions as performances of a contested “authentic” homeless identity that both transforms the stigma of homelessness into a “selling point” and reinforces the stigma associated with homelessness, ultimately positioning the stigma of homelessness as a souvenir of the Other.