Denver Voice by the numbers 650 people vended the Voice in 2008 989 vended in 2009 177,564 papers were distributed in 2009 55 percent of vendors are not homeless 82 percent of those say they pay for their housing with the money they earn from vending the Voice

Raelene Johnson pointed at the bridge that allows the Boulder Creek Path to dip under Broadway just west of Boulder’s Central Park.

She was wearing one of her staple cowboy hats — the black one that’s decorated with a collection of tiny teddy bears — and she had a stack of Denver Voice newspapers tucked under her arm.

“When I started vending the paper, I was sleeping right there,” Johnson said, “right underneath the bridge.”

Johnson, 53, doesn’t sleep there anymore. She’s been off the streets for about two years now, thanks to the income she makes from vending the Voice, a street paper that, three years into its reincarnation, is now helping more than half of its growing vendor pool afford a place to sleep inside.

Like street papers across the globe, the Voice has a mission to both educate the community about homelessness and poverty and to provide those who face those issues every day an opportunity to work through its vendor program.

About 150 vendors sell the paper each month. As many as 10 sell papers at least sporadically in Boulder, but the two constants tend to be Johnson and Jerry Rosen. Anyone who’s a regular at the Boulder Farmers’ Market has probably seen the pair, who flank the market on any Wednesday and Saturday with decent weather — Johnson to the north, Rosen to the south.

Rosen, 48, doesn’t sleep on the streets either. Now, he usually stays with friends, but he still spends the occasional night in the shelter.

“We did a survey at the end of November, and 55 percent of our vendors were not homeless,” said Gretchen Crowe, who runs the vendor program. “Most were in hotels and paying for housing by vending the Voice. That’s our goal — that none of them are homeless.”

Vendors buy the Voice for a quarter and sell it for a suggested donation of a dollar. The difference is theirs to keep.

“Vending the Voice is the only job I know where you get to keep 75 percent of the profit — and it’s legal.” That’s one of Johnson’s favorite things to tell potential customers as she explains how the vendor system works. It almost always gets a laugh, which makes everyone feel more comfortable, she said.

For many vendors — who collectively sell 16,000 papers a month — it’s also one of the only jobs they can hold down. Some lack the education they need to be easily employable. Others suffer from mental illness or have a felony conviction in their pasts.

“Sometimes I have trouble working other jobs,” said Rosen, who has a reputation for being unflappably kind and courteous to his customers. “Sometimes I get so paranoid, and I’m afraid I’m going to make a mistake. I try my best, but some people are so hard to work for.”

Vending the Voice allows Rosen to be his own boss and to set his own hours.

“I really enjoy selling papers so much. I like working with people,” he said. “Since I started vending, it gives me confidence in myself — that I’m doing something to help myself.”

The Voice’s first 10-year run ended in the spring of 2006. A year later, Denver businessman and philanthropist Rick Barnes, who missed seeing his usual vendor, began work to revive the paper. He recruited a group of students from the University of Colorado’s journalism school, including Amelia Patterson, who is now the executive director.

“I started with a love of journalism. I love writing — the whole art and craft of it,” said Patterson, who never made it back to CU to finish the master’s degree she started. “I didn’t really have a place in my heart for homelessness. That was unexpected for me.”

The Voice may not be solely focused on the journalism, but the monthly news-style magazine has won several national awards, including the 2009 Excellence in Urban Journalism Award from the Freedom Forum and the Enterprise Institute.

And the Voice has also been growing relentlessly. In 2008, the paper provided 650 people with vending work over the course of the year. In 2009, the number jumped to 989 — about 15 percent of Denver’s entire homeless population.

In the coming year, Patterson, who still lives in Boulder, hopes to cool the growth while her team works to make the paper more stable so that it will continue to be a presence in the Denver metro area and continue changing the lives of people like Rosen and Johnson.

“The heart and soul of the Denver Voice is seeing people transform,” she said. “And not just the vendors themselves through the experience of having a job. But also readers, who develop relationships with vendors — many of whom would never otherwise talk to someone who’s homeless.”

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.