People experiencing social difficulties in Munich have been selling street paper BISS for 30 years. Tibor Adamec has been there since the start – and not only gains money, but also self-confidence.

“I’m not a beggar, I’m a trader”: 30 years of BISS

Debates about the supposedly too generous German welfare state distract from the more important questions, says Helene Steinhaus of the German association Sanktionsfrei (Sanctionfree) in an interview with Hinz&Kunzt.

We can no longer afford the rich

Although unemployment and precarity are most often discussed in connection with young and educated people, in Serbia, unfavourable conditions in the labour market have in recent decades mostly affected older women. Hundreds of thousands of women who were employed in industries such as textiles in socialist Yugoslavia were left without a job and the right to a pension due to the collapse of the economy and privatisation. Liceulice writes about the invisibility of women over 45 in the labour market, and the “double lives” of older women who opt for uncertain and illegal jobs as caregivers in Germany.


Workplace discrimination leads to exploitation of Serbian women in Germany

 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

Contemporary artist Gerhard Richter kickstarted 

’s Housing First effort with his own paintings. Credit: 

A unique Housing First effort in Düsseldorf combines art, newspapers and advocacy to pair the unhoused with apartments. The brainchild of the city’s street paper fiftyfifty, revenues from sales of works by famous artists are used to buy apartments for those who need them most.

Home is where the art is: How Düsseldorf street paper fiftyfifty turns paintings, prints and photographs into permanent shelter

Iso Numero's Enkete Mungbaba. Credit: Janne Hukka.

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 Brazil to Finland – tell us, in their own words, what a street paper is, personally to them.

“Street papers have a sort of superpower” – what street papers are in the words of those who sell them

In Kirchdorf-Süd, a project developer has built micro-apartments for people in need of housing. Why doesn’t this happen more often?


25 square metres of freedom: inside Germany’s micro-apartments

As different as the perspectives on people experiencing homelessness in Dortmund’s city centre are, one thing is clear: there are now more people sleeping rough, and they are worse off—often suffering too much to seek out aid facilities. The city’s network of housing and addiction support has consequently expanded and adapted its outreach services. In addition to advice and care, this also includes medical support from Diakonie, a Protestant church-run charity organisation.


Surgery on the street

As a marginalised group, people experiencing homelessness are disproportionately susceptible to violence at the hands of right-wing groups with an intolerant ideology. But how we as a society relate to homeless communities also plays a role in this, says political scientist Martin Stammler. He spoke to Nuremburg street paper Strassenkreuzer about the subject, Social Darwinism and how it turns to hatred and violence.

"Our society determines whether neo-Nazis feel called to kill": How people experiencing homelessness become vulnerable to right wing violence

An artist from the Academy of the Street at work. Photo: Katharina Mayer

Street paper fiftyfifty and art professor Katharina Mayer founded the Academy of the Street with people experiencing homelessness. Mayer, an important contemporary photographer, has repeatedly photographed people experiencing homelessness in work, countering the often-negative perception of people experiencing poverty and exclusion with portraits that emphasise the dignity of marginalised communities.

“Pictures are my soul”: inside the Academy of the Street

Many homeless people in Germany go to prison for “riding public transport without a ticket.” But often, they have no other choice: they might be short of change, but long distances lie between welfare infrastructures, and their feet are already sore. The fatal choice between sacrificing mobility or being punished also affects poverty-stricken people who are not homeless. In November, activist Janita-Marja Juvonen gave a speech - in front of the left parliamentary group in the German Bundestag - in support of all people in need and without a ticket, as part of the event ‘Do we live in a justice system based on class?’ Daniel Knaus, a journalist for German street paper Trott-war, then wrote about a vendor who has experienced this form of punishment.

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