Spare Change News - History

History

The paper was started in Boston in 1992 and was the brainchild of Tim Hobson, who enlisted the aid of twelve other homeless people and one housed advocate, Timothy Harris, who was a member and Executive Director of Boston Jobs with Peace. In 1994, Harris would go on to use the model of Spare Change News and the Homeless Empowerment Project to found Real Change, a street newspaper in Seattle. Harris was later quoted as saying about street newspapers like Spare Change News and Real Change and creative artistic expression:

"When people think of helping the poor and homeless, they usually think of food and shelter," Harris said. "Those things are necessary, but it's more than that. It's the spiritual. The homeless need to express themselves and be a part of the community. It's important that they have human dignity". —Tim Harris, one of the founders of Spare Change News,

The first issue of Spare Change News was published on Friday, May 8, 1992.

The newspaper's first managing editor, Tim Hobson, said at its founding that it would be "heavy on politics as well as discussion of homeless empowerment". He also said an important goal was to "put a face on the homeless to show that we're human beings".

MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, together with his friend, the historian Howard Zinn, were some of the first major supporters of Spare Change News.

In June 1993, one of the founders, James L. Shearer, appeared before the Boston City Council to accept a special commendation on behalf of Spare Change as the newspaper celebrated its one-year anniversary.

In July 2002, Spare Change News and the Homeless Empowerment Project hosted the Seventh Annual Conference of the North American Street Newspaper Association.

In November 2007, Boston's South End street newspaper Whats Up Magazine disbanded and merged into Spare Change News under the umbrella of the Homeless Empowerment Project. On February 28, 2008, Whats Up published their first 4-page insert inside Spare Change News.

In 2008, Spare Change News received a grant from The Harbus Foundation of Harvard University Business School, to use it "to support a long-term marketing strategy to increase the awareness of the organization amongst the general public and generate broader distribution and commensurate aid for its vendors."

In October 2010, a Worcester, Massachusetts edition of Spare Change News was launched. It is a collaboration of Spare Change News and the Worcester Homeless Action Committee.

In July 2011, Tom Benner, a veteran journalist and former head of the Massachusetts State House bureau for The Patriot Ledger newspaper, joined as the new editor-in-chief.

In June 2012, Vincent Flanagan, Esq., was appointed Executive Director of the Homeless Empowerment Project/Spare Change News. Mr. Flanagan was previously Development Director for Legal Affairs for Give Us Your Poor, and served in various senior level and managerial positions during his 25-year career with the federal judiciary, such as Circuit Executive for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, Massachusetts.

In August 2012, the Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a Pentecostal (Church of God in Christ) Christian minister, community organizer, and activist who studied religion at Harvard University and Union Theological Seminary in New York, joined Spare Change News as Editor-in-Chief. Reverend Sekou was interviewed by Callie Crossley on WGBH Radio in Boston on August 29, 2012 about the mission and future of the newspaper.