Posts Tagged homelessness

Sue Ellen Heflin, Executive Director, WVC

In March 2009, I was in an internet café in Cuzco (yes, Peru.) Having just experienced my first polka dot hot chocolate (chocolate syrup splotched with a spoon inside the clear glass cup) I turned to the net to catch up with my work life, knowing it was going on perfectly well without me. Dan Hammill, a WVC Program Director, suggested the Volunteer Center pursue a new project – development of a “virtual furniture bank” to help recently-housed people get furniture so they could have the basics of everyday life.

I had never heard of such a thing. And I’d never really thought about how hard it is for people without a home to move into a new place and not have a bed, a couch, a table, or chairs. Or how important this element of normalcy most of us take for granted is in helping people stay housed. When I returned to Bellingham, we agreed that WVC would take on this project, developing it with the aid of a VISTA volunteer and some “stimulus” grant funding from the Department of Commerce through the Opportunity Council.

The virtual furniture bank had questions to resolve: how to 1) get household items to people who need them, 2) use volunteers to pick up and deliver the items, and 3) design the program to eventually be handled entirely by volunteers. When we researched other furniture banks (there are many,) we found they serve newly-housed populations with furniture in warehouses, with paid and volunteer staff. . With Bellingham’s high property costs, we knew we couldn’t afford a warehouse and we believed that it would be possible to develop the program “virtually.” We named the virtual furniture bank House 2 Home Network (H2H.) Deliveries began in October – since then it’s helped 85 households with deliveries of 294 household items.

We know virtue is its own reward, but occasionally it’s good to know that others value our efforts. WVC and H2H were honored recently by the Opportunity Council as a Community Partner for our work to help eliminate homelessness. It was humbling to listen to Greg Winter of the Homeless Service Center talk about H2H and the work our staff has undertaken. It was a pleasure to be there for H2H’s moment in the sun. In a year, the program went from a sketch on a cocktail napkin to a full-fledged, cutting-edge program that is a model for other communities. Congratulations, H2H!