Clad in a sequined hat, Anna Richelle ran her fingers across the plastic covering of a room full of mattresses Thursday afternoon. The 70-year-old said she felt quite at home as she adjusted the drawers of a bureau and then wrapped the cord of a lamp around its base.
Richelle has been a regular at the Houston Furniture Bank since 2014. She began as a shopper but quickly became a volunteer, dusting and sweeping for the old facility on Hussion Street before a fire destroyed it in 2015.
"My husband had a stroke, and Oscar (the manager of HFB's thrift store operation) gave me a scooter for him to ride," Richelle said. "I told him I didn't think he'd ride it, but my husband got on it. After that day, there was never another scooter. We just got lucky. The place is a miracle."
The nonprofit dedicated to "Making Empty Houses Homes" debuted its new warehouse at 8220 Mosley with a ribbon cutting Thursday. The 75,000-square-foot space is more than triple the size of the old facility and aims to serve up to 500 families a month within the next two years under a more aggressive business model.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who spoke to an audience of HFB volunteers, partnering agencies and customers, identified with the Houston Furniture Bank's theme of charity. During his time at Harvard Law School, he needed a mattress and all he could afford was one from Goodwill, he said.
"I came to say thank you to the Houston Furniture Bank for stepping up when the City of Houston needed organizations to do so," he said.
'Like a phoenix'
The nonprofit began in 1992 as a pilot project aiming to help 140 families under the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County. When Executive Director Oli Mohammed realized its potential, he proposed creating a furniture bank to serve the community. In 2003, the furniture bank became an independent agency, and it opened its first outlet in 2008.
Through partnerships with over 85 agencies, it serves between 100 and 150 families a month - an effort that was stalled by the devastating fire at the Hussion warehouse. At the time, Mohammed, promised the nonprofit would rise from the ashes "like a phoenix."
"I knew that there were poor people in America, but when I saw the condition that people were living in, it was unacceptable," said Mohammed, who arrived in Houston from Bangladesh in 1987. "That challenge, that unfilled need. It's very understandably prevalent. If you want to see it, you see it. And it's a condition that doesn't need to exist. That's the point. That's what keeps me going, the thought that 'This is not something that needs to happen.' "
About 600,000 mattresses going to landfills and 300,000 children sleeping on floors would seem to fit in his home country, Mohammed said. In America, it doesn't make sense.
The furniture bank's Designing Interiors - Volunteers At your Service, or DIVAS program, is the creative arm of the nonprofit that transforms local families' homes with donated items.
Challenging stigmas
DIVAS member Connie Hizem said they interview the family like an interior designer would, finding out their needs and furnishing the home accordingly.
"The first house I went to, when we were finishing the apartment, it was interesting because they had this little boy - he was 5 - and there were no books in the house," Hizem said with regret. "Last Friday, we went in with a woman and she had a newborn baby, she was 8 weeks old and premature, and I brought books for the baby."
Founded in 2003 by two Houstonians looking to help the community, the DIVAS soon joined forces with the Houston Furniture Bank.
Member Connie Page said she'll never forget the home she furnished for a veteran who moved to Houston to help her mother afflicted with Alzheimers.
"My husband passed away a couple of years ago. We would always donate furniture and clothing and do what the DIVAS are actually doing now," Page said. "I used to always say to my husband before he died, that that's what we should do - help other people - and I'm so happy to be doing it now, even though he can't see it."
Hizem said the stigma surrounding poor people is something that is immediately challenged by the work. After helping a client in need, she goes home and hugs her children.
"You can't imagine that feeling. We're ridiculously lucky," she said.
Resource :http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Furniture-nonprofit-debuts-new-warehouse-11056571.php
