By Margo Pierce
Photos by Jay Black

The North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) features 28 members, including Megaphone Magazine. Last December, we embarked on our first collaborative article.

Journalist Margo Pierce spoke to members of the NASNA network while investigating stories and legal cases where homeless individuals are being fined or thrown in jail for sleeping outside, crossing the street and having nowhere to use the bathroom.

Streets of Plenty is a documentary staring Misha Kleider, a university student who decides to live on the streets of Vancouver for a month in order to prove that the homeless are a “bunch of scammers”.

Megaphone vendor Ron McGrath, who is homeless, reviewed the movie for the magazine.

By Elecia Chrunik
Photo by flickr gingr

Homes come in all shapes and sizes, most notably in low-income neighbourhoods. In the Downtown Eastside makeshift tents and fort-like structures are found dotting the sidewalks and alleys, making it obvious that the lack of livable and available housing continue to be pressing problems for Vancouver. The last official city count found that there were more than 2,500 people living on the streets, with many housing advocates stating that the real number is much higher.

By Sean Condon
Photo by Chris Bevacqua

By Patrick Y.
Photo by Gare & Kitty

In the mid-90s I used to sell Spare Change at the Harbour Centre, on Robson Street and in Kerrisdale. I left Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 1998 and moved back to Alberta, obtaining a decent job driving a forklift and frontend loader.

My last story for Spare Change was about my Christmas in 1997 and how that was one of— if not the— best holiday seasons ever for me. It was Christmas Eve and I had had a very good day selling and conversing with my customers.

By Elecia Chrunik
Photo by Jay Black

Leef Evans’ shirt is still damp with sweat from a two-hour soccer practice at the Carnegie Centre, but he doesn’t seem bothered. Instead, just steps outside the door, he launches into a story about the former city library and its founder, Andrew Carnegie.

By Sean Condon
Photo by Simon Hayter

In April Smith’s short video, 12 Days of Olympics: Vancouver Got to See, a choir of Downtown Eastside residents run through a list of all the great fun and sporting events that come with the Games. Sung to the tune of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, the video is a playful ode to all the merriment that consumed the city for two-and-a-half weeks last month.

By Sam Sullivan
Photo by Reuters/Andy Clark

One moment I was skiing and feeling invincible, the next moment I was struggling to feed myself. At 19, I broke my neck and became a quadriplegic. For seven years I lived on welfare in institutions or social housing.