One Block, One Borough: How Throckmorton Street Holds Freehold Together

At 39 Throckmorton Street in Freehold Borough, a food pantry opens its doors Monday through Thursday. Next door at number 41, an emergency housing advocacy program helps people who have lost their homes. Down the block, a church runs a free lunch program twice a week and community suppers twice a month. An after-school program helps elementary students with homework. All of this happens within a few hundred feet of one another, in a borough of 12,500 people where more than half the population is Hispanic or Latino.¹

This is not a coincidence. This is community resilience — the kind that does not make headlines but keeps families from falling through the floor.

The Quiet Engine on Throckmorton Street

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church sits at 33 Throckmorton Street. It has been a fixture in Freehold for generations. But the building and the block around it have become something more than a place of worship — they have become the borough’s informal social services hub.

The Freehold Area Open Door, operating out of the Keith Building at 39 Throckmorton, is a food pantry that also provides rent and utility assistance. Their mission is direct: meet people where they are, address immediate needs, then support them toward self-reliance.² One community member on social media described the reality plainly: Freehold has “no food bank and one soup kitchen that does most the food security work.”³ Open Door is that lifeline.

Steps away, the Emergency Housing and Advocacy Program (EHAP) at 41 Throckmorton provides case management for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their housing — helping them secure shelter and navigate the benefits system.²

St. Peter’s itself runs a community lunch program on Wednesdays and Thursdays, serving bagged lunches and a place of fellowship for anyone who needs it. Twice a month, on the second and fourth Fridays, community suppers bring in volunteers from across the Freehold area to prepare and serve a full sit-down dinner, free of charge.⁴

And then there are the children. The Open Door After School Program provides homework help for Freehold Borough elementary students in grades one through five, running Monday through Thursday from October to May. Volunteers make sure every child’s homework is done and provide educational games to strengthen academic skills.²

A Borough Where Neighbors Show Up

What makes Freehold’s safety net remarkable is how much of it runs on volunteer power. The Blessing Bag Brigade, organized through AAUW Freehold Area and based at St. Peter’s, recruits volunteers to make 10 sandwiches each on Wednesdays and Thursdays — peanut butter and jelly, turkey, ham, cheese — dropped off by mid-morning so they can be distributed at lunch.⁵

Across Monmouth County, this spirit scales dramatically. Interfaith Neighbors, the organization that operates Meals on Wheels in Monmouth County, delivers approximately 350,000 meals per year to about 3,500 senior citizens, with a corps of more than 500 volunteers driving 69 routes every weekday.⁶ They also run a limited weekend and holiday meal program for homebound seniors who have no one else.

Freehold Borough’s formal government has been working in parallel. In 2021, the Borough received a $125,000 Neighborhood Preservation Program grant from the State of New Jersey — one of only 40 communities selected. The program focuses on social, civic, and economic development by recruiting diverse stakeholders — residents, business owners, clergy, and municipal government — to address challenges together.⁷

What This Means for Our Community

Freehold is a case study in what researchers call “community resilience” — the ability of a neighborhood to absorb shocks, adapt, and take care of its own. But resilience does not mean the system is not under strain.

With 52% of the borough identifying as Hispanic or Latino — the largest group being of Mexican origin at 56% of the Hispanic population¹ — language barriers remain a real obstacle to accessing services. A family that speaks Spanish at home may not know about LIHEAP, may not be able to read an English-language utility notice, and may feel intimidated walking into a government office. The organizations on Throckmorton Street bridge that gap in person, but their capacity has limits.

The Borough’s official community resources page lists programs ranging from tax relief to utility assistance to food programs — but navigating that web of acronyms and phone numbers requires digital access, English literacy, and time that many working families simply do not have.⁸

This is precisely why Love of Humanity is building a Mobile Energy Assistance Unit — a converted trailer equipped with digital kiosks, Wi-Fi, a consultation area, and bilingual materials that can deploy directly to churches, community events, apartment complexes, and the places where families already gather. The model brings services to people rather than asking people to find services. It is designed for communities exactly like Freehold: tight-knit, hardworking, multilingual, and underserved.

How You Can Help

Community resilience is not free. Every meal at St. Peter’s depends on volunteers. Every Open Door pantry visit depends on donations. Every after-school homework session depends on people who give their time. And every family that cannot afford their utility bill needs someone willing to help close that gap.

$35 a month from you means a family in Freehold Borough does not have to choose between groceries and keeping the lights on. It means the safety net on Throckmorton Street gets an ally — one that can reach the families who never walk through those doors because they do not know help exists, or because they are afraid to ask.

What You Can Do Today

If you need help, the Freehold Area Open Door is at 39 Throckmorton Street (732-780-1089), open Monday through Thursday. St. Peter’s community lunch runs Wednesdays and Thursdays from noon to 1 PM. You can also call NJ 211 for a full range of services in your language.

If you want to volunteer, St. Peter’s welcomes helpers for their lunch program and community suppers. Interfaith Neighbors needs Meals on Wheels drivers across Monmouth County — 500+ volunteers are not enough. The Blessing Bag Brigade takes sandwich makers every week.

If you want to give, know that your donation to Love of Humanity goes directly to families in this community — the same families served by Open Door, the same seniors getting Meals on Wheels, the same children doing homework after school. We are building something that works with these organizations, not in competition with them.