Cleveland Street Chronicle's Holiday Gift Wrap Edition is Now Available

The Cleveland Street Chronicle’s annual holiday issue is now available for purchase. Credit: NEOCH

The Cleveland Street Chronicle’s holiday edition, the easiest and best way to get gift wrap and support the city’s homeless population, is now available to purchase.

Sold in print around Cleveland by on-street vendors, the Chronicle is the quarterly newspaper full of first-person essays and takes on news from current or formerly unhoused folks.

Its holiday issue is just $2 and is covered in pet-themed wrapping paper large enough to wrap a hardcover book or two. This year, it can also be bought online on the website of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the paper’s publisher.

Along with saving Clevelanders a trip to the Dollar Store, the Chronicle is also, NEOCH says, a supportive way of giving a homeless person a few extra bucks to make it through the winter. (Vendors pay 25 cents for each issue; NEOCH and vendors divide the profits.)

“I’ve always seen the street newspaper business as an immediate source of income,” NEOCH’s Molly Martin told Scene. “You don’t need to do a background check. It doesn’t matter if you have a felony background. It’s kind of just seen as a low-barrier form of immediate employment.”

As temperatures around Northeast Ohio plummet, homeless and unhoused people must make their yearly decision on how to battle the blistering cold and find food.

The Chronicle is a small part, Martin said, in Cleveland’s wintertime push. Its wrapping paper issue comes as City Hall nears its year-end goal of attempting to secure housing for 150 homeless people. As of October, the city said they housed about 70 people through Mayor Bibb’s Home For Every Neighbor initiative.

Cuyahoga County stepped up earlier this year by opening the 2200 Lakeside Avenue Men’s Shelter—a solution for the crammed 2100 shelter next door—and broke ground on a new women’s shelter earlier this summer.

Literary Cleveland released its first compilation of fiction, essays and poetry, Writing From The Unhoused, in June.

All which Martin felt are wraparound ways to handle an issue that’s been nationally politicized and scrutinized heavily in recent years.

“I think continued advocacy around our homelessness numbers, around unsheltered homelessness, have kind of remained pretty steady over the last few years,” she said.

“And I think that just creating the political will and increasing the number of staff and attention towards landlord recruitment towards the individual cases is a great help,” she added. “Just cutting through some of the red tape in general, and having a focus? It all helps.”

Vendors will be selling Chronicle at the West Side Market.

You can also buy copies at the following: Mac’s Backs Books, Loganberry Books, Joy Machines Bike Shop, Paradise Galleria, Lekko Coffee, Five Points Coffee & Tea, Black Market Meats, The Root Cafe, Lion & Blue and Cinnful Whisk.

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