The Big Issue narrowly avoided going bust during the pandemic, its founder has said, as sales continue to be hit by the cost of living crisis.
For the first time in the magazine’s over 30-year history, Covid meant that people who are homeless or long-term unemployed were not able to sell it on the streets, and its leadership had to rapidly rethink the model of the social business.
John Bird, who is also editor-in-chief of the magazine and a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, said the magazine has had to undergo “enormous transformation” in recent years to survive.
“We almost went out of business,” he told the Observer. “We had to do things like get subscriptions from people, and we had to raise money and use every means possible to support our vendors.”
He added: “We were a social business that went through the crisis but we had to be businesslike with it, and that’s why we’re telling everybody to take a subscription at this time of the year because half the money still goes to supporting the vendors.”
As well as starting subscriptions, the Big Issue Group provided sellers with direct financial support, supermarket vouchers and PPE, brought in more card readers so sellers could go cashless and started a subsidy scheme to increase sellers’ earnings from magazines.
Now sales are being further affected by the cost of living crisis as millions across the UK struggle to afford essentials.
“We’re having to look at the fact that many of our vendors are having problems and they need support and help, and we’re doing our best to do that,” Bird said. “Getting people to subscribe and buy the paper is a great way of doing that.”
Bird, who experienced homelessness as a child, said the convergence of Brexit, Covid and war in Ukraine, as well as last year’s Conservative leadership crisis, had led to “a kind of shitstorm all coming together”.
The situation, he said, reminds him of the “series of storms that engulfed Britain in the 70s”. “But the difference now is they’re coming together all at once,” he added. “And there is not anybody who’s out there to rescue us.”
Calling for consensus in British politics, Bird said the UK was in a “war situation” as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is hitting the poor of the UK, Europe and the US. “There doesn’t seem to be any kind of grownup thinking, and that’s what is my biggest concern.”
He called for the government to take action to stop households who cannot pay their rent from being evicted, warning of a surge in homelessness. The number of homeless households is expected to rise to 300,000 a night this year, the charity Crisis predicts, a 32% rise on 2020.
As well as providing more financial support to people struggling to pay for food and energy, the government should be assisting landlords financially to avoid rent rises and cut evictions, said Bird.
“I’m not saying I am not concerned about people who can’t feed themselves or heat themselves, but the worst possible thing to add to that is if hundreds of thousands of people are made homeless … then it completely goes off the Richter scale,” he said.
• The headline and subheading of this article were amended on 24 January 2023. An earlier version suggested Lord Bird had said the Big Issue was “struggling to stay afloat”; as the article made clear, he explained how the group almost folded during the Covid pandemic but had recovered; the struggle now was for vendors to sell copies of the magazine amid the cost of living crisis.
