How We Do: Switzerland’s Surprise Strassenmagazin
According to a study last year by the World Bank, Switzerland, my home country, is the richest nation on this planet. The US comes in a close fourth, right after Denmark and Sweden. In the poorest countries, such as Ethiopia, up to half the money comes from natural resources; in Switzerland, that proportion is close to one percent. Basically, my country, which lies in the very heart of Europe, is rich because it posesses an awful lot of immaterial capital such as an education system and a functioning system of law. The same goes also for the US, I suppose.
If you came from another planet and heard the facts I just mentioned, it’s a pretty safe bet that you would assume that everything—and I mean everything—was fine and dandy in both of our countries. Alas, it is not—far from it. Even though both our nations are rich beyond comprehension, there’s a lot amiss.
It’s roughly ten years since I visited San Francisco last, and the city is just as beautiful as I remembered: right out a picture book. At least, in certain areas. What I couldn’t remember: that only a few blocks from Union Square there exists a completely different world—one that is not very nice to look at; one that most certainly doesn’t attract any tourists.
I was shocked to hear that there may be as many as 6,000 homeless people in San Francisco; I was even more shocked to learn that no one knows the exact figure. Pardon me for saying so, but this is disrespectful. These people deserve better. Of course, you can tell me to shut up, that this is none of my business, and that instead of criticizing your country I should rather take a closer look at mine. I have: Switzerland is in no respect perfect. Whatever country I visit, once I introduce myself as being Swiss, people tend to come up to me in order to talk about the less than honorable role that my nation played in World War II. A fortnight ago or so, I was having a late night beer at Speck’s, and an old guy made fun of me, saying that now that with me, the Swiss, there, he had better make sure that I didn’t pinch his gold teeth. But I wasn’t going to talk about those dark secrets in Switzerland’s past here: I was going to compare the situation of homeless people and of street papers in our two countries.
So far, Switzerland with its approximately seven million inhabitants has virtually no homeless people. How come? Because the state takes care of you. If someone loses her or his job and doesn’t find a new one right away, she or he receives 80% of her or his income for the following 18 months. At the time of writing this four out of 100 inhabitants are without a job in Switzerland. If you don’t manage to find a job over a two year period, you become dependent on social benefits. The amount of money you get varies from canton (county) to canton. If this happened to me (God forbid!), then as a single person I would be entitled to something around $2,000 per month. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Especially when I hear that you can count yourself lucky when you get something like $65 per month in county aid over here. Basel, my hometown, would also provide me with subsidies for my health insurance (and extra money if I had kids, which I don’t) and help me find a cheap(er) flat, if necessary. If, for example, I felt that my sofa was falling to bits, I could apply for a new one. Of course, I wouldn’t get the sofa of my dreams, but it would be new.
Switzerland is known to be very expensive, but when I look at what I pay for my groceries here, my country suddenly feels like a haven of low prices.
So what would the state expect me to do for those $2,000? Not much: I’d have to have a talk with a social worker every now and then, and he could make me take a course (paid by the State) which should provide me with new qualifications that ought to make it easier for me to find a new job.
However, the State couldn’t make me take any job, though they could offer one. So if I—being an editor by profession—should choose not to accept a job sweeping the streets of Basel, I could just refuse it. This is what most people do.
The system may sound attractive in some ways, but it has a lot of faults. For example: It may not be appealing to return to work, at least not to a job with meagre pay: As soon as you earn a few Swiss francs again, the department that gives you your social benefits claims a big share of that—sometimes as much as 80%. So in a way, it doesn’t matter (or does so only for your dignity) whether you go to work in a low-income job or not: at the end of the day, your salary may well be more or less the same. That’s why many people prefer to settle down for good with their social benefits.
No politician would say it publicly, but it’s my sincere belief that the Swiss state gives long-time unemployed people enough money to survive; in return, the authorities expect those people to stay quiet, to stay at home (or at least off the streets), and to accept for good that society doesn’t need them. That’s a disgrace.
I’ve been editor-in-chief of Switzerland’s only street newspaper, Surprise, for a bit more than three years, now. Our magazine, with its 32 pages, is in many ways quite different from the Street Sheet. If you look at it, our publication may seem to have more in common with Time magazine than with the Street Sheet, at least on the surface. Originally, I was hired as arts editor, which probably makes clear why Surprise has a quite strong arts section, and judging from the letters we get, quite a lot of our readers obviously perceive us as some sort of alternative popular culture mag that by chance also deals with social issues. Lefties have accused us of being mainstream; I don’t mind that, even if I don’t share that view. My goal is to reach as big an audience as possible, while still acting as a voice for poor people. I’m more that willing to write about more than the hardships of life. After all: From my point of view most readers are only willing to take a certain amount of misery in a magazine…
Our readership has reached approximately 100,000 per issue. We appear fortnightly and it’s a long time since our content has been concerned with poverty exclusively. And yes, despite what I said above, there is poverty in Switzerland. We have quite a lot of asylum seekers, for example, and drop outs, drug addicts, or people who simply don’t know how to apply for their social benefits (there’s no one to tell you how to fill out the tons of required forms). It’s these people that make the biggest share our 700 vendors. We have quite a tough time finding vendors, though, for the reason that I mentioned earlier: the State takes away most of your income. That’s why we also try to cut deals with the responsible authorities. Most of the time, we manage.
It’s our belief that Surprise can provide a way out of poverty; we see it as a job opportunity that helps the vendors structure their day again, in order to get back into a daily routine. This is also the reason that the vendors have to pay for our magazine in order to sell it—they pay us something like $2, and are allowed to sell Surprise for twice that price. The very first time a prospective vendor shows up at our offices, he or she receives ten copies for free. After selling those, he or she should have enough money to buy more copies. This may sound very capitalistic, but it keeps the vendors on their toes, they have to calculate how many copies they can afford and how many they are going to sell. The effect is that they (with the help from our sales managers) become more self-confident and more self-assured again. This takes time, and can be even a matter of years with lots of setbacks, but we have found that that’s the way it works best.
Nowadays we even have a program where we hire up to 14 vendors at a time, a program which interested vendors must qualify for by selling a certain number of copies per issue. If accepted into the program, we provide them a pass for the public transport system, and they get a salary and even money for holidays amongst other things. Although Surprise earns enough money through sales to pay staff’s salaries, our non-profit-organisation also depends heavily on donations for our projects, for which we have recently hired two social workers.
To wrap things up: While we take very different approaches, it is obvious that the Street Sheet and Surprise deal with the same basic issues. But after all, there is no one “right” way to do things, is there? The most important fact is this: Both the Street Sheet and Surprise are out there to help poor people. We both aim to improve our publications and the lives of our vendors. There is still a lot to be done. There are still far too many poor people out there—in both of our nations.
Michael Gasser is editor-in-chief of Surprise, Switzerland’s street paper. You can contact Michael at m.gasser@strassenmagazin.ch, and find Surprise on-line at http://www.strassenmagazin.ch.
The Street Sheet is pleased to present a viewpoint on how a street newspaper can operate in very different social and economic conditions.
Michael