A Big Issue seller walks past a property company's construction hoarding, a night time panorama of Thames riverside properties. The temporary hoarding will stay in place for the time that the company's new residential riverfront apartments are under construction. In the image, the river Thames bends round to Westminster as the man walks past. The Big Issue is a small-budget magazine started in 1991 by Gordon Roddick and A. John Bird in response to the growing number of rough sleepers on the streets of London. The two believed that the key to solving the problem of homelessness lay in helping people to help themselves. Vendors buy their magazines with their own money and sell them at their own profit or loss.