On an ordinary Wednesday in August of 2008, there were sixty-one separate listings in the “Free Stuff” section of Chicago’s Craigslist directory. The belongings made freely available ranged from highly desirable items (an entertainment center in great condition, a working “Gilbranson [sic] organ,” televisions, and microwave ovens) to those that might be useful to a niche population (a Hewlett-Packard inkjet cartridge, VHS tapes of the motion pictures Free Willy and Free Willy 2, and wooden doors from a colonial house built in 1938) to the nearly worthless (a broken refrigerator, one cubic yard of dirt from a landscaping project, and “Tons of River Rocks”). All were offered by their owners on a first-come, first-served basis. In most cases, the items were kept inside the owner’s home, and a claimant would need to make arrangements with the owner to haul off the property. But the owners were not picky—the first claimant with the ability to do so could take the advertised property home. In a few cases, such as that of the broken refrigerator, the item had been left by the owner in an alley or another easily accessible place, and the Craigslist advertisement described its location.

Craigslist is hardly alone in pairing would-be abandoners with potential claimants. Another national organization, the Freecycle Network, offers a similar service with high levels of participation, and BookCrossing is a global service that facilitates the abandonment and finding of books. In recent years, communities of “freegans” have sprouted up in urban areas around the world, eating, cleaning, and wearing resources that other people have discarded. As a testament to the prevalence of abandonment and the value of the resources abandoned, it appears that some of these freegans are able to live essentially pleasant, middle-class lives. As the American economy has slid into a significant recession, states like Florida and South Carolina are dealing with hundreds of abandoned boats that are clogging local waterways, left by owners evidently unable to find buyers and unwilling to pay slip fees. Moreover, it is not only personal property that is widely abandoned. In rural, sparsely populated areas of Kansas, Nebraska, and North Dakota, local governments have made free land available to anyone willing to build a house on it and move in. In urban centers, the problem of abandoned dwellings is significant, accounting for 23,000 dwelling units in New York City in 1996 and 1.3% of all urban residential housing units in fifty-eight cities in the northeastern United States in 1975.