Fourth Avenue Street Fair offers employment, including to those experiencing homelessness

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Amongst the noise of bands playing music and sizzling food, Stephan Rankus rolled a trash can through the hundreds upon hundreds of people. He collected the full trash bags around the fair and unrolled new ones, replacing them in several trash cans.

He’s one of the many workers the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association employs in their work program. They employ anyone and also include people facing financial hardships and homelessness.

“To keep it functional and smooth flowing, it’s very important,” Rankus said about his work.

He’s been working at the fair since 2016 and since 2022 he’s also cleaned Fourth Avenue as one of their “weekend warriors”.

“I just decided just to be gun ho and do the job at hand,” he said.

In 2014 he faced unemployment, but a few years later he started working on Fourth Avenue.

“You have means to acquire sustenance and food and materials,” he said about his work.

The Fourth Avenue Merchants Association said they start workers at minimum wage and they can make more based off what they’re doing.

“There’s a steadiness of dependency that I can have a comfort there of,” Rankus said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest numbers showed the unemployment rate went up from 3.9 percent last February to 4.1 percent last month.

“We just want to give everyone an opportunity. We want to make them feel like they’re a part of the community,” Chelsea Szymanski said.

Szymański is FAMA’s director of events. She said they hire about sixty to seventy seasonal workers.

“They give us their all every time and that’s awesome!” she said.

For Rankus, as he rolled around his trash can, putting in his all is what the job is all about.

“Put your best foot forward. Put your best effort and if you’re satisfied, then you have a good standing,” he said.

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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.