A 16-page collaboration with Bay Area Current
This special issue of Street Spirit is published in collaboration with Bay Area Current, a publication launched in June 2025 to cover working-class news, life, and culture across the Bay Area.
In the print version of our April 2026 paper, you will find the work of both Street Spirit and Bay Area Current, with headlines set in our signature typefaces.
We chose to collaborate on this issue because our work often overlaps, the stories in our publications are frequently in conversation, and together they echo a shared reality: The struggles of the working class are inseparable from the forces that lead to homelessness.
By definition, homelessness is the absence of fixed, regular, and adequate housing—but the complex and precarious road from housed to unhoused starts long before a person sets up a tent or moves into their vehicle on a city street.
For every unsheltered person living in our cities, there are thousands of tenants on the brink of eviction, workers who are fighting to earn a living wage, seniors who are struggling to maintain their grip on housing without being pushed out by rising costs, and families living paycheck to paycheck—all at the expense of losing everything.
Maintaining economic stability is an immense privilege in the Bay Area, a region that has become famous for its profound inequality. In 2025, the median annual income for a single person in Oakland was roughly $112,000, compared to about $42,000 in the country at-large.
Coupled with a highly pressurized housing market, the majority of people living in the East Bay have been impacted by these drastic economic shifts—not just those who are relegated to sleeping on the sidewalks.
Above all, we aim to show that homelessness exists on the larger spectrum of class struggle, that it’s simply the most visible manifestation of a systemic breakdown that began long before its effects were seen.
We hope this issue provides insight into some of the actions and initiatives currently taking place in local workplaces, apartment buildings, and diminishing public space, emphasizing our larger, intersectional struggle for a dignified life.
Read Bay Area Current’s contributions on their website:
“Bay Area Workers Fight Bosses For First Union Contracts” by Daniel Tutt
“Tenants Win at the Vulcan Lofts” by Cole Sherlock Hershey
“Loo Review: The Bay Area’s Best Public Restrooms” by Catherine Roseman
“Film Review: Wood Street (2026)” by Myron Angus (website version forthcoming)
Street Spirit is based in Berkeley, CA and run by Alastair Boone, Bradley Penner, and Kevin Sample. We are fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a 501(c)(3) organization.