Dozens of agencies in the St. 不良研究所导航网址 area help people without permanent housing find a place to live, a pervasive problem in a region in which more than one in 10 fall below the poverty line.
Just one agency in the area focuses on ensuring that those homes are more than four walls and a roof.
in Brentwood works with about 20 nonprofit partners to provide furniture and household goods to clients in transition 鈥 veterans, mothers with young children, domestic abuse survivors and ex-offenders trying to get back on their feet, among others.
鈥淚鈥檝e never done anything that鈥檚 made such an immediate impact,鈥 said volunteer Chris Racker, a Tuesday morning regular at Home Sweet Home.
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The furniture bank grew from a need that founder Betsy Reznicek saw when she was working at the Center for Women in Transition and, later, at a homeless shelter. Clients would find permanent housing, but the rooms would echo with emptiness.
In 2015, Reznicek started piecing together a business plan for what would become Home Sweet Home. She gathered a board, registered the nonprofit and secured a $5,000 donation that went to a rental truck and a down payment for a 3,200-square-foot space on Locust Street downtown.
Then, she networked.
鈥淚 tried to get as many people to get involved as I could. I started with a lot of people giving a little bit of money,鈥 said Reznicek.
She tapped her connections at local social service agencies. They were supportive, if dubious: 鈥淚t was, 鈥極h, you鈥檙e cute. Let us know how that goes for you.鈥欌
It took awhile to cobble together enough furniture for the first client, a dialysis patient who was living in a bare apartment with a salvaged television and a few bowls for cereal.
Word got around. Soon, Home Sweet Home was inundated with requests. The mental health clinic Places for People became a partner early on.
鈥淧rior to that, we didn鈥檛 really have an agency that could help people furnish their home,鈥 said Trina Muhammad, a case manager at Places. 鈥淲e could sometimes get a small voucher for one item, like a couch. 鈥 This is one less thing they have to worry about.鈥
But Reznicek鈥檚 circle of friends soon depleted their stashes of spare sofas and extra pots and pans. She had to figure out a sustainable way to serve the most clients with limited resources.
She decided to restrict the number of agencies she worked with and charge them a small fee for each referral. That income let her hire movers, giving her more time to focus on procuring donations.
Dau Furniture in Ellisville designated Home Sweet Home as the beneficiary of its program, donating a new mattress to the nonprofit for every mattress purchased at its store. As more people found out about the nonprofit, donations snowballed. The space on Locust started to feel cramped.
At the same time, Home Sweet Home lost its lease downtown. A $100,000 capital campaign yielded $166,000, enough for the furniture bank to get its own place last fall 鈥 and triple its size.
The 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Hanley Industrial Court is organized like a big-box store, minus the price tags. Each weekday morning, a Home Sweet Home volunteer helps clients navigate the rows of couches, shelves of clocks and lamps, and bins of sheets and blankets.
In the afternoon, the furniture is delivered to clients. A second truck purchased in late summer allowed Home Sweet Home to double its weekly appointments, to 20.
The Brentwood move had other benefits. The central location made it more convenient for donation drop-offs and attracted more volunteers to help out the four part-time employees.
More than 275 people have helped out this year at Home Sweet Home 鈥 organizing the warehouse, testing appliances, filling out paperwork and walking the aisles with clients.
Many clients are initially hesitant, but then start trying out armchairs, comparing shower curtains and making other decisions about what will turn their houses into homes. It becomes part of the healing process.
For Starr Thomas, that meant choosing not just kitchen chairs and wooden dressers but also a long white frame with five openings, enough to hold a picture of each of her children.
She and her kids, ages 5 to 12, had been in their modest Country Club Hills home for about three months when the St. 不良研究所导航网址 Crisis Nursery referred her to Home Sweet Home. The family had been sleeping together on a pile of blankets. They ate their meals standing at the kitchen counter.
Last Friday morning, Thomas arrived at the furniture bank, not sure what to think. Her personal shoppers 鈥 yellow stickers in hand to mark her selections 鈥 encouraged her as she sifted through the shelves.
鈥淭hey told me it was OK to need help. They said to think of the kids,鈥 said Thomas.
She chose a navy rug, a tall white bookcase, a vacuum, linens, silverware and mugs; also, a black light-up spiderweb and a hanging mobile of cartoon bats, just in time to decorate for Halloween.
She didn鈥檛 tell her kids until Saturday morning that they had spent their last night on the floor. Her boys were playing in the front yard, tossing around a football, when the Home Sweet Home van pulled up. Eight-year-old John held the front door open as the mattresses were carried in, one after the other.
Thomas said she was looking forward to an afternoon of arranging furniture and organizing the kitchen.