We are Reid and Liv, and we are roommates. We found this house in early 2020. Almost immediately, the pandemic began. We worked in cafes and restaurants, and suddenly everything shut down. At the same time, there was food everywhere, freezers full of things that were about to be thrown away. We talked to our bosses, organized ourselves, made spreadsheets, and started delivering food to people who needed it. It worked for a while, but it wasn’t sustainable.
So we changed the project. We put an old refrigerator onto the front porch, put up some shelves, and started stocking food there. The porch became a free community store from that day on.
This matters to us because so many food systems are built on control and shame. Here, the goal is dignity. People aren’t charity cases, they’re part of a network. We’re trying to move away from a scarcity mindset and toward the idea that there is enough for everyone. We sometimes put goods on the shelves, and other times we serve ourselves out of them. It's just a matter of giving what we can and taking what we need, and it's the same for everyone.
The porch creates real encounters. When people meet here, hierarchy disappears. We see strangers help each other and connect in ways that don’t usually happen. There’s a sticker on the fridge that says, “We only have each other.” That feels true here.
This project is imperfect and a little bit experimental, and certainly we wouldn’t change it for the world. And there's an important reason: "It shows people that we can take care of us"- Liv.
So we changed the project. We put an old refrigerator onto the front porch, put up some shelves, and started stocking food there. The porch became a free community store from that day on.
This matters to us because so many food systems are built on control and shame. Here, the goal is dignity. People aren’t charity cases, they’re part of a network. We’re trying to move away from a scarcity mindset and toward the idea that there is enough for everyone. We sometimes put goods on the shelves, and other times we serve ourselves out of them. It's just a matter of giving what we can and taking what we need, and it's the same for everyone.
The porch creates real encounters. When people meet here, hierarchy disappears. We see strangers help each other and connect in ways that don’t usually happen. There’s a sticker on the fridge that says, “We only have each other.” That feels true here.
This project is imperfect and a little bit experimental, and certainly we wouldn’t change it for the world. And there's an important reason: "It shows people that we can take care of us"- Liv.