By Julia Hendler and Erin Cromwell
Boston residents gather monthly at the Fenway Community Center (FCC) to exchange clothing, toys and household items at the Free Market, an event designed to reduce waste and build community.
The market is unique in that residents drop off unwanted items and take whatever they find useful, all free of charge.
The event is hosted in collaboration with Fenway Forward, an organization the FCC works closely with. Formerly known as the Fenway Community Development Corporation, Fenway Forward is a neighborhood advocacy group that strives to preserve the integrity of the Fenway neighborhood through initiatives such as expanding affordable housing and strengthening community engagement, according to the Fenway Forward website.
Sage Carbone, the community programs director at Fenway Forward, said free markets are uncommon because they’re hard to fund, but they provide an essential service to the community.
“The whole point is that we are learning to live in an economy that doesn’t need to be based on capitalism and how much money you make or what you have,” Carbone said. “It’s also about what you give.”
FCC Executive Director Mallory Rohrig said the event is designed to serve the neighborhood’s key demographics by making it more convenient for them to dispose of unwanted items.
Two of the “highest populations [in the Fenway] are college students and senior citizens,” she said. “Both groups that are looking to offload items and don’t necessarily have the means or the cars to get rid of those items.”
People of all ages browsed the donation tables while snacking on free pizzas served by the market. While parents shopped, their children played in the community center’s kiddy corner.
“Not only are we helping to keep the things out of the trash, but we also are helping to facilitate this connection point and intergenerational aspect as well,” Rohrig said.
Richard Dunshee, 61, lives in East Boston, but discovered the FCC through his frequent visits to the Fenway Victory Gardens, where he has managed a garden plot since 1994. Dunshee spent the entire day at the market, chatting with other attendees and the organizers.
“You get to meet a lot of people,” Dunshee said. “You get to spend some time here, sit down and talk to them.”
It’s the people, he said, that keep him coming back.
Although not from the Fenway, Dunshee remembers what it was like before much of the current development — when a McDonald’s restaurant stood where the FCC now operates. Today, the center shares its West Fenway address with a luxury apartment building, where units rent for as much as $9,000 per month, according to online listings.
While the past couple of decades have seen heavy development in the Fenway, it is one of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, Carbone said. Thirty-seven percent of residents live below the poverty line, more than double the city-wide rate of 18%, according to Fenway Forward’s 2023-2025 Community Investment Plan.
“[The neighborhood includes] the have and have-nots,” Regina Fink, director of constituent services for State Senator Will Brownsberger, said, who pointed out the sharp contrast between the luxury apartments and low-income housing co-existing in the Fenway.
Brownsberger’s district encompasses most of the Fenway, and his team was at February’s market distributing free and reduced-fare Charlie Cards for eligible residents.
Vicki Moultol, a self-proclaimed regular at the FCC, said she uses the event to shop for herself, friends and family.
“I like the free stuff, obviously,” Moultol said. “But I also like connecting with the neighbors, because I see people here sometimes that I don’t see otherwise.”
Julia Hendler and Erin Cromwell are students in the Boston University Journalism program. This story is a partnership between The Boston Sun and the Boston University Journalism program.