29: Community cafes
More than a free lunch
This is part 29 of a series. To go back to the very beginning, start with part one. To go back to the start of this section, start with part fifteen.
One of the ways the Fountain House keeps people coming back every day before they’ve integrated into the “family” is providing meals at a negligible cost to members. This is also the driving force behind the community cafe. Community cafes provide meals at no cost – accompanied by the opportunity to make a donation – to anyone who shows up. The combination of affordable meals and a welcoming environment keeps people coming back until they’ve become part of the community.
While someone needs to have been diagnosed with specific mental illnesses in order to join a clubhouse (and is often referred to one through formal channels), a community cafe is open to anyone who can share a meal with strangers. Generally the goal is to help neighbors who might otherwise not interact to form meaningful relationships with one another. It’s all about cultivating a community where all neighbors are included.
Community cafes are designed to be welcoming to people who might not typically feel welcomed in a cafe – like someone with unusual behaviors or notable physical differences. This centering of people who are often left out can be off-putting to some. Community cafes often struggle to differentiate themselves from “soup kitchens” and work to bring in people from the broader community, across socio-economic lines.
While community cafes rarely have formal programs to provide for meeting people’s social determinants of health, these needs are often met informally thanks to the cafe. The people organizing a cafe always have connections to local support organizations and experience navigating bureaucracy. Warm introductions, small acts of practical support, and simply knowing that it’s possible to get help make a big difference in people actually being able to access the services they were already technically entitled to. Chatting with neighbors from all walks of life connects people to paid work, affordable housing, household help, and the various ways we help the people in our lives.
There are a lot of community cafes. It’s certainly an easier program to get running than a clubhouse. Many of them are operated by or hosted in partnership with a religious organization. Religious organizations have groups of people prepared to volunteer, a mission to welcome neighbors and aid those in need, and often have spaces to prepare and/or serve meals. They also already have the legal infrastructure required to operate a community cafe legally. Others have strong political messages and may operate outside of formal structures.
I’ve been to community cafes in several countries. You can look them up online, but this isn’t the best way to find them, as many of them have a decidedly understated online presence. There’s generally an inverse relationship between how easy it is to find a community cafe online and how nice it feels to be there. To put it more plainly, the ones that are most well advertised tend to feel a lot like a soup kitchen.
It makes sense, since the big goal of a community cafe is not to feed people, it’s to bring neighbors together. When your target market is your neighbors, the best way to reach them is word of mouth or in local forums. I end up in community cafes when I happen to walk by and see a sign, often with a motley crowd of people hanging out outside. I hear about them from the kinds of people who see me waiting for the bus and take the opportunity to tell me their life story. When I meet someone through CouchSurfing or Host A Sister or a friend of a friend who offers me their guest room even though I’m essentially a complete stranger, they usually know if there’s a community cafe nearby.
12 Baskets
I didn’t go to Asheville to study 12 Baskets Cafe. I went there in 2019 and by then I’d already learned that whatever program sounded fascinating in a case study was generally not nearly as exciting when I was there in person. I’m looking for things that aren’t quantifiable and the programs with those qualities rarely put out sexy case studies. Still, I showed up in Asheville with a few meetings lined up. Asheville has a reputation for being counter-cultural and community oriented, so I trusted I’d find something interesting there.
I happened to end up staying a block away from 12 Baskets Cafe. Or, really, from the Firestorm Co-op, an anarchist bookstore and coffee shop that was upstairs at the time (they’ve since moved to a larger space). The building was situated on a hill, so around the corner was a second ground-level storefront, the Kairos West Community Center. Officially, Kairos West was hosting the 12 Baskets Cafe in their “community living room.” Really, though, 12 Baskets had taken over and become the community living room. 12 Baskets is run by Asheville Poverty Initiative. At the time, API was run by a Presbyterian minister. The separation between these organizations felt like a technicality, though. The people leading these projects and the building’s owner were all working together to make West Asheville a community where people took care of each other.
I got to Asheville. The crowd outside caught my attention. I noticed the sign. I went in and then it took over my life.
Okay, it wasn’t quite so simple. I found the crowd a little bit intimidating, because everyone seemed to know each other and the last community cafe I’d been to had been an awkward experience (in their defense, it was in the French part of Montreal and my French is rudimentary). But I was there to learn about these sorts of things and this was obviously a place where people with visible disabilities, their support team, and random people were all hanging out. Also, I was staying in a basement apartment, so I was eager to get out of the house. The library was not particularly enticing as a place to work, although the librarians were friendly and helpful.
12 Baskets was set up to make this easy for anyone to show up and get involved. Anyone who shows up is welcomed and fed. People introduced themselves and introduced me to people they thought I’d get along with. Anyone who wants to volunteer can. I don’t even remember how it happened, but somehow I ended up with an apron. What did I do the first day? Was I washing dishes, taking orders, or serving food? I have no idea.
I do know that I left that afternoon with a completely different experience of West Asheville. I couldn’t take the dog for a walk without running into someone I recognized, who now stopped to chat for a few minutes. I would see people at an outdoor cafe and stop to join them for a drink. I knew the names of people waiting for the bus. People invited me over for dinner. The people living in their cars and spending their days hanging out drinking in the park now invited me to come hang out with them. People would see me walking to or from the grocery store and stop to give me a ride. I started getting invited to join people for hikes or just about anything they knew I couldn’t do without a car.
By the end of the week living in West Asheville was like living in my hometown. If I needed something, I would ask around until I found a neighbor I could borrow it from. If I needed a ride I could catch a ride with someone else. I got my information while chatting with people at the mailbox or in the grocery store, rather than from the news. My day was regularly interrupted to help a neighbor move something heavy or to check on their dog because they were running late. I didn’t need to put much effort into making plans, since things happened spontaneously and I was regularly invited to things.
When my neighbors living in houses had issues with our neighbors living in cars and encampments, I became one of the people who would defuse the situation so they could come up with a solution. Neighbors would reach out to folks involved with 12 Baskets rather than confronting people or calling the cops. As someone who didn’t have a car and thus walked a lot, I was one of the easiest people to find.
The impact of a community cafe
One of the reasons it can be so challenging to follow a special diet is because of how much of our social lives revolves around food. Not being able to join a meal without special precautions can be profoundly alienating. Just like a family dinner or night out with friends is not about the food, community cafes exist to build community. Sharing a meal is a way to bring people together.
Many of the people coming to 12 Baskets for lunch were regulars. A few people came every day, while more came on a semi-regular schedule based on work, transportation, child care, etc. It was an excuse to get out of the house and see friends. While people in Asheville tended to associate 12 Baskets with those who used drugs and had unstable housing, it was a great place for kids. Regulars who showed up with kids or dogs were doted on. There was a collection of toys and books to keep kids occupied, although most of the time the kids would play with other guests while their parents ate.
The health code dictated that dogs couldn’t enter the building, but there was always someone eager to volunteer to keep the dog company outside while they ate. Since there were always more guests there for lunch than seats at tables, people who were finished eating would hang out in the entryway or outside. At the end of my stay in Asheville, 12 Baskets opened a garden space outside, giving people a more comfortable place to hang out and chat, as well as an opportunity for the cafe to grow its own vegetables.
The Kairos West space was a big open room with a step-free entrance, two bathrooms (one of which met ADA code), and a small office/storage space. The cafe seating consisted of tables and chairs that could be folded up and moved out of the way or rearranged. This flexibility and the generally informal nature of the cafe meant things were continually being adjusted based on our needs at the moment. This made adjustments based on the access needs of a particular guest part of the ongoing flow, rather than a commotion.
Community cafes cultivate connections across various interest groups. I remember reading studies showing that people who have a lot of weak social connections find new jobs faster than those with a tight-knit group of friends. They simply have more opportunities to find out about unadvertised positions and to get personal connections to hiring managers because they know more people. In a close group, it’s much more likely that we all know the same people. It works the same way when it comes to needing help navigating a bureaucratic system, fixing something in the house, or wanting company for an activity. Knowing a lot of people means we’re much more likely to have the information, skills, experience, and connections that will help us.
As someone who was only in Asheville temporarily, I benefited greatly from advice from locals. As someone who didn’t have a car, I benefitted by getting rides. Most of these things weren’t things I actually required, they simply made my time there nicer. Chatting around the tables at 12 Baskets led to the sharing of all sorts of information about jobs, housing, and advice for managing day-to-day hassles. It also led to offers of practical help, like babysitting and lending tools. We didn’t just talk about life’s challenges, though. We talked about all sorts of things. We swapped books. We gossiped. We hung out and became friends.
While the vast majority of food distributed by 12 Baskets came from local restaurants and cafes, people brought in food, too. People regularly brought in the sorts of things we exchange with neighbors, friends, and coworkers, like a bounty of tomatoes from our garden, the extra batch of cookies they made. All sorts of people brought in food (or art supplies or whatever) when they had more than they needed and all sorts of people brought things home. If you live in an apartment building with the spot where neighbors exchange things for free, you know the vibe.
It’s hard to know the extent of the impact this neighborliness had on Asheville overall. Given the situation at the time, where residents with stable housing were in conflict with those without, it seemed that 12 Baskets made the community safer. Bringing people from various communities within Asheville together gave them the opportunity to interact in neutral and positive ways. This gave them some common ground to start with when addressing areas of conflict. Regular contact also provided the opportunity to discuss areas of conflict before frustrations boiled over.
People also expressed neighborly concern over those who they suspected might be struggling with family conflict, drug use, mental health, and financial issues. This led to friends and neighbors checking in and helping to connect them to formal and informal resources. At a minimum, regulars knew that they had people who noticed their absence and were there to talk.
That’s not to say that there was no crime or conflict. The community fostered by 12 Baskets wasn’t a stand alone solution to every problem in West Asheville. Some of the issues people faced went beyond what mutual aid can “solve.” Not every problem needs a solution. 12 Baskets created a situation where people who weren’t open to addressing addictions and mental health issues remained a part of the community and knew what support was available to them if and when they decided they wanted it.
Neighbors accused 12 Baskets of attracting itinerant travelers and encouraging them to stay. While I didn’t come to Asheville because of 12 Baskets, I can confirm that it did make me want to stay longer and return in the future. People living in vehicles share information about the resources and acceptable behavior in each place. Folks who appeared to be completely incoherent could explain bylaws around busking, panhandling, parking, and waste disposal as well as any attorney I’ve consulted. 12 Baskets did not directly provide any resources other than meals, which were also provided by several charities in the area. Resources such as housing, financial support, medical care, were provided by other organizations and often required proof of residency. The traveling community already had effective channels for sharing this information; it was the local community which had not previously been sharing guidance on accessing resources.
What 12 Baskets did provide to the itinerant community was the clear enforcement of behavioral norms that largely avoided direct police intervention. When neighbors had complaints about the behavior of people without stable housing, they would often contact 12 Baskets directly. The police would both refer people to 12 Baskets and would speak to 12 Baskets leadership to address issues. When 12 Baskets was open, people who would otherwise loiter in parks, the library, and other public spaces instead spent their time in Kairos West.
A major quality of life issue in many cities is the lack of access to toilets and bathing facilities for those without housing. People have to go somewhere. 12 Baskets provided clean toilets to anyone who came to the cafe, while local businesses restricted access to paying customers. It also organized and hosted meetings with the business improvement district leadership, police, and other parties to pursue more comprehensive solutions.
Charity vs mutual aid
In order for communities to help each other, it helps for there to already be a community. As Rebecca Solnit eloquently demonstrated, communities form in response to disasters. That’s less likely to happen when the disaster is ours alone. Having a friend stop by and help you with a few things while they’re there feels very different from having a volunteer “friendly visitor” come to help, even if they do the same exact thing. One is simply what friends do, while the other transforms one person into a volunteer and the other a recipient of charity.
Perhaps the most important aspect of 12 Baskets is that it is explicitly not a program for people with disabilities. Some people do perceive community cafes as a charity program. They’re often legally indistinguishable from a charity, which is inevitable because of the requirements to operate legally and access funding.
According to the health code, restaurants in Asheville cannot reheat food. Charitable organizations can, but they cannot sell it. Restaurants thus are forced to dispose of food that’s perfectly safe – and delicious. Restaurants donating to 12 Baskets pack food into trays and either drop it off at Kairos West or arrange for volunteers to pick it up. Catering companies would also drop off food left over from events.
12 Baskets was open for lunch five days a week and dinner on Sundays. Volunteers at 12 Baskets then serve the food out of warming (or cooling) trays. While it’s set up as a buffet, the health code does not allow people to serve themselves. The food available is listed on chalkboards and guests can order off the menu. Quantities are limited to whatever was donated, so the menu changes during the meal each day. Desert items were the most likely to run out.
Kitchen Mama Donna would do her best to ensure each meal contained the opportunity for people to have a healthy, balanced meal. When she didn’t have a good balance of options, she would prepare food from scratch to fill the gaps. There were always vegetarian options. I got to know the preferences of regulars, so if something they asked for ran out before I filled their plate I knew what their second choice would be. We’d all set aside the most enticing desserts for our friends. All the volunteers would sit and eat at some point. Goofing off and chatting was encouraged, because community was the point.
It’s hard to dissolve the divide between staff, volunteers, and participants in a formal organization. It’s easy at a smaller, less formal organization like Asheville Poverty Initiative. There was no process to become a member or a volunteer. You showed up. You put on an apron. Some people regularly showed up in order to volunteer, often retired people living nearby and students needing volunteer hours. Plenty of people decided to put on an apron spontaneously, because they saw another set of hands were needed or they were too antsy to sit around. Most of the tasks were simple – handing over plates of food, washing dishes, sweeping, stacking folding chairs at the end of the meal.
No one under any one label – staff, volunteers, and guests – was most likely to be financially stable. API had a very small operating budget, so accepting a job was tantamount to accepting a vow of poverty. The most dedicated participants (and volunteers) were those who were not working because they were retired or disabled and thus likely to be living on a stable but very low income. Staff, interns, and regular volunteers did not generally come from wealthy or even ‘comfortable’ family backgrounds. Those who appeared to be financially stable often had significant debts for student loans, medical bills, and mortgages, making that stability inherently fragile.
One of the marks of a successful program is that all participants benefit from it. I did not go to 12 Baskets because I was struggling to afford food. I would not be identified as at risk for social isolation, substance abuse, unemployment, or serious mental illness. Still, I benefited from going to 12 Baskets as much as anyone else.
I didn’t walk out of Kairos West feeling the angelic glow of someone who gave back or helped the needy. I was hanging out, flirting, teasing, laughing, commiserating, and eating as myself, not as a Good Person. I felt good because I liked having something to do each afternoon. It was nice to have a tasty lunch that I didn’t have to cook. I got to eat lunch with my friends every day for the first time since high school. It was nice meeting new people almost every day. I learned all sorts of things. Even on days when the cafe was closed, I ran into people I knew. The neighborhood felt safer. I can’t quantify how it felt to see familiar, friendly faces every day. Thanks to 12 Baskets, West Asheville felt more like home to me after three months than my Brooklyn neighborhood did after six years.