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Aurora man who founded StreetWise gives homeless a chance at better life

By Heather Gillers

Staff Writer

Judd Lofchie's dream came true on a summer day 13 years ago at the corner of Congress Parkway and Wabash Avenue.

He was driving by the busy Chicago intersection when a man standing on the median strip flagged him down and tried to sell him a copy of StreetWise.

Today that's a common occurrence. Weary-looking men and women hawk the weekly broadsheet across the city. Stop to chat with a vendor, and you may learn that she is homeless or that he is saving for a security deposit on an apartment.

But that August day in 1992, the first issue of StreetWise hit the streets. Lofchie remembers it vividly.

"It was just so wild to see the thing that we worked on for easily two years ... the thousands of hours we put in actually manifested," he said. "There's a guy selling our paper."

A slim, soft-spoken Aurora lawyer and real estate developer, Judd Lofchie grew up in Oak Brook and Downers Grove.

His father, a restaurant owner, made a point of hiring the disabled and the needy. Washing dishes side-by-side with his dad's employees taught Lofchie a lesson that would become the philosophy of StreetWise.

"We, as a society, need to make it a priority to hire people ... who need it really bad," he says, "because they need a break, and sometimes, all they need is a break."

Every Wednesday morning, 150 people who need a break congregate at the entrance to the StreetWise offices on a street lined with meat and fish retailers about seven blocks west of Chicago's loop.

They are war veterans and ex-offenders, former addicts and former college students. In Lofchie's words, "they're just people without homes."

They buy a stack of papers at 35 cents apiece and, then, rain or shine, snow or sleet, wind or gale, they fan out to assigned corners around downtown, and in neighborhoods across the city to hawk their wares to commuters.

The paper's $1 retail price means vendors make an average of $56 a day — enough to afford an occasional room for the night and eventually a security deposit on an apartment. Some vendors — it's hard to say how many — are able to parlay the work experience into another job.

"You realize 'Hey, it's not just about selling papers,'" says Greg Pritchett, StreetWise's distribution manager. "'I can put together a resume.'"

Pritchett, himself a former vendor, carefully keeps track of his past employees' successes. Some vendors get jobs with the Chicago Transit Authority. Others go to work for Walgreens.

"I like to say God sent a message to Judd Lofchie," Pritchett says.

A beggar for the beggars

Lofchie was a young lawyer in Washington D.C., writing freelance articles on the side, when an interview on homelessness convinced him "how lucky I have it and that these people really need help." He started hiring the homeless for moving and maintenance jobs at his office.

When Lofchie moved to Chicago, he and his friends charged for parties and contributed the proceeds to ending hunger. By this time, his commitment had earned him a nickname.

"People have called me a beggar for the beggars," he says, "because I'm always asking for money for the homeless."

Lofchie, usually articulate, grows silent when asked why he helps the needy. To him the answer is obvious.

"People who can help other people should," he says finally.

By the time Lofchie learned about a paper sold by New York City's homeless, in 1990, he had the newspaper smarts and the drive to start one in his hometown.

He and Casey Covganka, a friend who sold advertisements at a Chicago daily newspaper, spent two years and much of their savings putting together Streetwise and writing articles.

Word travels fast among Chicago's homeless. Within the first week of publication, the paper had 300 vendors. Three months later, the circulation of StreetWise exceeded 100,000.

A national model

"StreetWise has always been considered one of the model street newspapers," said Michael Stoops, director the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

Stoops runs the North American Street Newspaper Association, an organization Lofchie helped start in Chicago in 1996. The organization has about 30 member papers ,and Stoops estimates that there are 40 "street papers" in the US.

StreetWise gets calls "all the time," Lofchie says, from people eager to start new ones. Editors there have learned to tell callers that street papers flourish in cities where commuters use public transportation and there is a healthy stream of foot traffic.

Business thrives, they've learned, when vendors are held to strict standards. At StreetWise, Pritchett runs a three- to six-person "quality assurance team"

Christian Science Monitor,  Apr 11, 1996

It's a common city scene: Homeless men and women shuffle off ice-gripped streets into a downtown shelter and slump down on a gritty floor to await handouts.

But this is no usual dole; these needy have come to help themselves. Instead of nabbing a hot meal, they stuff newspapers into their bags and head back into the cold.

These homeless are vendors for the nonprofit newspaper StreetWise. For three years, hundreds of homeless have entered the StreetWise office and come out taking their first steps back toward self-sufficiency.

Shouting pitches like, "$1 keeps us employed, don't be annoyed," the paper's vendors -- at times as many as 600 -- work the aisles of elevated trains and the curbsides outside restaurants, department stores, and railway stations. They keep 75 cents out of every $1 paper they sell, making on average $491 a month.

StreetWise is one of 109 street newspapers -- those sold by the homeless -- that have sprung up worldwide in the past decade, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

The papers bristle with a hard-nosed, curbside prose, a unique hybrid of social work and community newspapering. Many of their names proclaim their spicy editorial mix of fire, wit, and angst: Mall Ratz (Eugene, Ore.); Asphalt (Hannover, Germany); Street Heat (Atlanta); and Survival News (West Roxbury, Mass.).

The homeless coalition is also seeking funding for a conference on street newspapers in Chicago this year as part of its aim of cultivating such papers in all 50 states by 2000. There are already 48 street newspapers in Canada and the United States.

But StreetWise, a biweekly publication, is widely considered one of the leading street papers. It is the third largest of any newspaper in Chicago, profit or nonprofit. Its reported monthly circulation of 120,000 is three times more than any of its nonprofit counterparts in other cities. StreetWise is considering launching similar newspapers in Detroit and Washington.

The resounding success of StreetWise is unusual. Many such papers have folded because of mismanagement or local opposition. Some have failed to adequately train vendors and defuse concerns that the newspapers are just a cover for panhandling, says Michael Stoops at the homeless coalition.

StreetWise founder Judd Lofchie says good management has been a factor in the paper's success. But he also speculates that being in the Midwest has played a part.

"People here are generally more open and giving than people elsewhere," he says.

For vendors, street newspapers offer a way to move from down-and-out despair toward hope and self-reliance. "We give the homeless a way to get off a park bench and have some keys -- a place to live and a real chance to change," Mr. Lofchie says.

For readers, the papers open a window to life on the streets -- some of the articles are written by the homeless -- and help tear down the barriers of mistrust and resentment between haves and have-notes.

"Unlike most newspapers, we have an extra pitch: By buying a newspaper, you are helping someone as well as getting an editorial product," says editor John Ellis. "We build both community and awareness about homelessness," he says.

Recent issues of Streetwise carry news about public housing, holiday bargain shopping, and other topics for low- or no-income readers. A supplement called "Street Scene" features art reviews, cultural-event listings, and both poetry and short stories by homeless people.

Unlike commercial newspapers, StreetWise seeks to cultivate its vendors as well as its readership. It requires each would-be salesperson to complete a 12-session training program. Moreover, it uses a sweeping referral service to shepherd vendors into programs for drug and alcohol treatment, high school equivalency schooling, career counseling, and permanent housing.

"The whole thrust is to help people get into other full-time jobs," says Mr. Ellis, situated in the newspaper's offices at the former Looking Glass Theater.

But StreetWise recently endured a setback. As part of an expansion drive, it teamed up last year with a social group in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates and enlisted homeless people as vendors. But the paper halted sales after a few months because of local opposition. Hoffman Estates Mayor Michael O'Malley says many shopkeepers and residents complained that the vendors were too aggressive.

But StreetWise measures its success not just in new readers but in the turnabouts by its vendors. When William McBain began selling the paper in 1993 after an eight-month prison term, he remained on the street and used much of his income to buy liquor. Then an encounter with an elderly customer buoyed his self-esteem.

The woman gave Mr. McBain 75 cents and dug in her pocketbook for more than a minute for the last quarter. "This lady was so concerned about making sure that I had exactly what I deserved that I decided it was time for me to start doing what was right," said McBain, lugging a thick stack of StreetWise on his hip. He says he now rents a small room, seeks permanent work, and spurns alcohol.