Blogs › Furniture Co-Op's blog

Furniture Co-op Helps Families Make Homes

Submitted by Furniture Co-Op on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 15:29
One Tuesday morning at The Furniture Co-op, Alva sunk back into one of the donated couches with her two small children, and patted the bulge on her stomach. Her baby was due in a month, and her newly remodeled, subsidized apartment was empty except for a toddler bed and a couple of mattresses. She was looking for a couch, a table, some towels and small items to turn the place into a home before the baby arrived. “This (making a home) is challenging,” she said. “But you can do it – you can do it on your own if you have a little help.” The Furniture Co-op, located off Route 34 in West Haven, offers new, used and gently used furniture, house wares and other items to clients of 20 member agencies. Everything is absolutely free. Donations are by appointment, and clients can “shop” on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Co-op warehouse. They sometimes take one look at the mass of new, used and gently used tables, chairs, lamps, sheets and other household goods, and their eyes well up with tears.  Jean Davis, a Furniture Co-op volunteer, recalled an African-American family that found a set of dishes with a pattern that looked like an African textile. “For me, what I see most often, when they are picking out cups and bowls and things, is that people are all the same – we all want to have a few pretty things around us,” she said.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       The Neighbor-to-Neighbor LifeLine program recently gave New Haven Home Recovery a grant to support The Furniture Co-op. This money will help a program that has had an amazing impact on families moving out of shelters and settling into permanent housing. If it wasn’t for The Furniture Co-op, most of these families would start out in an empty apartment, with no bed to sleep on, no table to eat at, and none of the small items that can make an environment feel comfortable and special. Thanks to this generous donation, NHHR will be able to help more women like Alva create satisfying new lives for themselves and their families.

 

Share