Mutual Aid Cannot Be Regulated Out of Existence
611 Collective's Statement Opposing Proposed Evanston Ordinance 86-O-26
611 Collective stands in strong opposition to the City of Evanston's proposed Ordinance 86-O-26, which would impose sweeping restrictions on all community refrigerators operated by Evanston Community Fridges.
At a time when food insecurity is rising, grocery prices continue to climb, and the cost of living in Evanston is becoming increasingly unaffordable, the City should be expanding access to food, not creating additional barriers to it. Instead, this ordinance threatens to dismantle one of the most accessible, responsive, and effective examples of mutual aid operating in our city.
Mutual aid is built on mutual trust. This ordinance replaces that trust with control.
Evanston Community Fridges operates on a simple but powerful principle: take what you need, leave what you can. It is a system rooted in reciprocity, where people are not separated into categories of giver and receiver. Anyone can contribute. Anyone can take. People participate according to their means and their needs.
The proposed ordinance fundamentally changes that model.
By restricting the types of food permitted in the refrigerators, the City would eliminate many of the very things that make these fridges valuable. Prepared meals, homemade food, and a broad range of ingredients that allow someone to prepare a complete meal would no longer be accessible under the proposed approved-food list. These restrictions also create a financial barrier to participation. Not everyone can afford to purchase only commercially packaged, unopened goods. A neighbor who has prepared an extra meal, a family sharing ingredients, or someone contributing food they already have would be excluded from participating in the same way.
This is not a minor administrative change. It changes who can participate, what can be shared, and who gets to decide what food is acceptable to offer another person.
The ordinance also threatens the locations and partnerships that make these fridges successful.
Under the proposed ordinance, refrigerators would only be permitted outside retail centers, schools, churches, and buildings owned and operated by nonprofit organizations. The ordinance also limits refrigerators to one per property and caps the entire city at 20 active licenses.
Consider Soul & Smoke, a local restaurant whose refrigerator is among the most consistently stocked food access points in Evanston. It is precisely the kind of successful partnership that demonstrates how local businesses and mutual aid can work together. Yet the proposed property restrictions could jeopardize this location depending on how the City classifies the property.
Why would the City create rules that put successful food access points at risk?
Furthermore, restricting placement to specific property categories, including nonprofit-owned and operated buildings, creates another unnecessary burden on an already strained nonprofit sector. Nonprofits are facing significant reductions in grant funding, fewer available resources, and increasing demands for services. These organizations are already being asked to do more with less. Requiring them to take on additional responsibility simply to provide a location for a refrigerator is not a reasonable way to encourage food access.
The City should be encouraging partnerships between restaurants, businesses, religious institutions, nonprofits, and residents. Instead, this ordinance narrows the pool of eligible partners and potentially eliminates successful existing arrangements.
Who is going to enforce all of this, and who is going to pay for it?
Evanston is already struggling to provide basic municipal services. This ordinance adds another layer of licensing, inspections, monitoring, complaint response, and enforcement to the City's responsibilities.
The proposed ordinance requires routine inspections, gives the Health Department authority to approve or deny food items outside its prescribed list, requires refrigerator operators to respond to complaints within two days, and establishes fines of at least $200 for violations, with each day of a continuing violation considered a separate offense.
But there is a fundamental problem with this approach: Evanston Community Fridges cannot control who puts food into a public refrigerator.
These refrigerators are accessible to the public. Anyone can leave food at any time. It is unreasonable to create an extensive list of prohibited foods and then hold volunteer operators financially responsible for every item an unidentified person might place inside.
The likely result is a cycle of complaints, inspections, violations, and fines for an organization that cannot reasonably control every action of every person accessing its refrigerators. The burden of policing public participation will fall on the very people volunteering their time to make food available.
This is not a workable food access policy. It is an enforcement framework that places an unreasonable burden on volunteer-led mutual aid.
The City is also taking on a new regulatory responsibility without explaining the financial, operational, or legal implications.
By adopting this ordinance, Evanston would formally establish a municipal licensing and oversight program for community refrigerators. The Health and Human Services Department would be responsible for processing applications, reviewing food requests, conducting routine and complaint-based inspections, monitoring compliance, and participating in enforcement and license revocation.
These are ongoing responsibilities that require staff time, funding, and a clearly defined enforcement process. The ordinance does not establish a corresponding operational budget or explain how these additional responsibilities will be absorbed by an already strained department.
There are also legitimate questions about the legal responsibilities and potential exposure the City is creating by establishing this regulatory framework. While municipal immunity laws may protect Evanston from certain claims involving inspections, licensing, and enforcement, the City should be prepared to explain what legal responsibilities it believes it is assuming and what protections it anticipates relying upon.
What happens when someone becomes ill after taking food from a refrigerator? What responsibility does the City have after establishing a licensing and inspection program? What happens when an operator is penalized for food deposited by an unidentified member of the public? Has the Corporation Counsel evaluated the potential legal implications of this ordinance?
These are not hypothetical questions that should be dismissed. They are questions that deserve answers before the City adopts a new regulatory program.
The Council is proposing to spend municipal resources monitoring a system that is already functioning through volunteer participation and public trust. It should be able to demonstrate how this additional regulation will improve food safety, increase food access, or produce a measurable public benefit.
The fridges are telling us something the City should be paying attention to.
Food does not sit in these refrigerators for long. It moves. People access it because they need it, and others replenish it because they can. That is not evidence of a problem that needs to be controlled. It is evidence of demand, participation, and a genuine need for more accessible food resources.
The fact that food is consistently taken is not a reason to restrict access. It is a reason to ask why so many people need it in the first place.
For too long, the responsibility of addressing food insecurity has fallen heavily on volunteers, neighbors, nonprofit organizations, and people willing to share what they have. Evanston Community Fridges has helped fill a gap that should concern every elected official in this city. The answer cannot be to make that work harder.
We absolutely support responsible food handling and reasonable measures that protect public health. Food safety matters. But there is a significant difference between establishing sensible safety practices and imposing a regulatory framework that strips mutual aid of its flexibility, accessibility, and ability to respond to immediate needs.
The Council cannot claim to support mutual aid while creating regulations that undermine the very conditions that allow it to exist.
We ask every member of the Evanston City Council to consider the real consequences of this ordinance before voting.
Consider the person who relies on a prepared meal because they cannot afford groceries. Consider the neighbor who wants to share a pot of food. Consider the family who needs ingredients to make dinner, not simply a bag of approved snacks. Consider the restaurant owner who has made food access part of their business. Consider the nonprofit already struggling to maintain its existing services. Consider the volunteers who have built and maintained these resources without asking the City to fund their work.
And consider what it means when the City responds to a growing need for food access by restricting the people who are already doing something about it.
Evanston needs more food access, not fewer ways to access food. More mutual aid, not more barriers. More trust in the people who show up for one another, not regulations that make showing up impossible.
611 Collective stands with Evanston Community Fridges and urges the City Council to reject Ordinance 86-O-26 in its current form.
Mutual aid belongs to the people who practice it. It should not have to fit inside a narrowly prescribed list of approved ways to help one another.
Take what you need. Leave what you can. Let mutual aid work.
611 Collective
Evanston, Illinois
