In the heavy pelting rain of the December nor”™easter, Kate Bialo met us outside a warehouse building that once served as a homeless shelter on the grounds of the Westchester County Airport. It stands behind a permanently parked tractor-trailer with “Al”™s Moving” lettered on its side, a navigational guide for first-time visitors to Furniture Sharehouse.
“We have no heat,” said Bialo, who led us to a small rear office in the county-owned building where a tiny space heater did little to remove the flesh-penetrating chill. Our coats stayed on. “You have to be a particularly hardy person to be a volunteer here. We also don”™t have a toilet. We have a porta-potty.” Its green-sided shelter in the storm was visible from an office window. “A porta-potty in February is tough.”
The volunteers at Furniture Sharehouse ”” a nonprofit whose founder and executive director is Kate Bialo ”” supply comfort and warmth in other forms, and human dignity as well, to the needy clients who shop there in the company of their agency case worker or victim advocate and a personal shopper from the group”™s ranks of volunteers. As Elizabeth M. wrote in a thank-you letter for the furniture donations her family had received, “Now my apartment looks like someone lives here.”
A grateful social worker from Westchester Jewish Community Services wrote of that comfort and dignity given her client when she told Furniture Sharehouse staff, “Lou has gone from having only four folding chairs to a house to live in.” Lou himself said the help given him on his visit to the warehouse “was instrumental in relieving the stress that I normally experience due to my housing situation.”
For Nefylena Vernon Edwards, whose family “lost a lot from a house fire” in Mount Vernon, the free furniture and shopping experience at the warehouse “turned my fears into joy” and left her “overwhelmed” and teary-eyed. “Hopefully in the future when we see brighter days, we would like to donate to your company,” she wrote.
“Let it be known the furniture builds not homes but families,” the thankful client was moved to proclaim.
One-third of the clients with shopping appointments at the dimly lit warehouse are single mothers, Bialo said. Elderly residents of the county and victims of domestic violence, fire and other disasters also come in. “At least 60 percent of our clients are people who are coming out of shelters,” some of them military veterans, she said. Yonkers residents, some of whom take two buses to get to the county airport, make up the largest share of clientele, followed by Mount Vernon residents.
“They all have one basic thing in common,” said Bialo, a Larchmont resident. “They”™re living in empty apartments. They can”™t afford to buy furniture.”
“It”™s a hidden need,” she said. “It”™s something people don”™t really think about.”
An attorney no longer in practice, Bialo thought about it during her time as president and community grants coordinator of the Junior League of Westchester on the Sound. Social service workers told her of their frustration that used furniture left outside their agencies by the charity-minded could not be stored and were hauled away to dumps or carted off by scavengers before they could be distributed to needy clients. Bialo thought that a shameful waste ”” and acted on that thought.
In 2005, she began developing her idea of a shared warehouse where donations of the large furniture could be collected and freely distributed to county residents lacking in their domestic lives what most of us take for granted. She learned about furniture banks and the National Furniture Bank Association, of which Furniture Sharehouse is a member. The startup nonprofit received grants of $20,000 from Westchester County”™ s emergency shelter program and $30,000 from the Junior League of Westchester on the Sound for its first year of operation.
Bialo searched about two years for space for the recycling operation. In 2007, Furniture Sharehouse leased the 6,500-square-foot warehouse from the county and began collecting donations. Volunteers celebrated its grand opening soon after a nor”™easter in April that year left Westchester a federal flood disaster area.
Bialo opened a temporary distribution center in flood-stricken Mamaroneck and partnered with the local Washingtonville Housing Alliance and Hispanic Resource Center to replace furniture that those agencies”™ clients lost in the flooding.
“That was kind of a beginning,” she said. “We were able to help 65 families in 10 days with furniture.” The new nonprofit in town also used a $10,000 flood relief grant from the Westchester Community Foundation to buy new mattresses for families.
“That”™s the one thing we never have enough of ”” beds,” Bialo said. “That is our biggest need.”
It is not an open-door policy that Furniture Sharehouse operates by. Rather, about 30 nonprofit agencies in the county pay an annual membership fee of $150 each to bring their clients to the one-stop furniture shopping center. A $25 application fee is paid by the client or a member agency on the client”™s behalf. And though Furniture Sharehouse is the only organization in Westchester to put no price on the furniture selected by clients, it does charge fees of $75 for curbside delivery and $150 for its contract driver to carry the furniture into a home. Either the client or the agency must pay that charge.
Some clients cancel delivery because they can”™t afford the fee, Bialo said. “While it seems it”™s not that much money, it”™s definitely a challenge for clients to come up with it.”
The warehouse is open every Wednesday and Thursday morning. To encourage donor drop-offs at the airport site that spare the nonprofit the time and expense of home pick-ups, the warehouse also is open the third Saturday of every month.
“We”™re open two hours,” Bialo said. “We”™re able to do five to six families in two hours.”
“It”™s also more efficient in the wintertime ”” because it”™s so damned cold.”
For clients, it”™s “once-in-a-lifetime” shopping at Furniture Sharehouse, Bialo said. No return visits for additional furniture are allowed.
“Our problem is, we have a waiting list that is about six weeks long. We feel we have to help the families that haven”™t been helped before,” she said.
Many have been helped in their hidden yet urgent need. Bialo said the nonprofit assisted 450 families in 2013. Since its start, it has helped about 8,500 people, about half of whom are children.
“We have given away 49,000 pieces of furniture since we”™ve been open. That”™s 49,000 pieces of furniture that would have gone into the waste stream. We”™ve given 49,000 pieces of furniture new life.”
The nonprofit”™s service to the county”™s needy was recognized this year by Impact100 Westchester, a year-old women”™s philanthropic group, which awarded Furniture Sharehouse a $100,000 grant to buy a custom-built delivery truck for its operation. (See related story on page 7.) The new diesel truck ”” a manufacturer”™s delay in building an 18-foot box for it has held up shipment ”” will allow larger loads to be picked up on each trip, “which will increase our efficiency,” Bialo said.
“We”™re going to organize ”” I won”™t call it a visibility tour, but a new truck tour,” she said.
Dave Vitullo, Furniture Sharehouse”™s busy driver, stepped out of the storm and into the office as we spoke.
“I”™ve gotta unload yesterday”™s,” he told Bialo.
“Any beds in that batch?” she asked.
“Three twins,” he said.
It made for a good haul on a lousy day in Westchester.
Great article. I never realized this was a problem- a place to live but no furniture. I can totally see how it’s hard to have a normal life without a dresser or table or even a bed. Thanks for highlighting this charity.
John — thank you for this beautifully-written and thorough article about our organization! I love that you were able to feature some of our clients’ heart-felt thank you letters, and also managed to highlight our biggest need –beds! We are so excited about our new truck made possible by Impact 100 Westchester’s transformational grant — all your readers should watch for it hitting the streets of Westchester in the New Year and plan to finally get around to donating that furniture in their basement or attic that they no longer need! Thank you again for this amazing article!
As a volunteer at Furniture Sharehouse, I am so pleased that this article reflects the essence of the untold ways the furniture we provide makes such a difference in the lives of so many Westchester residents. When I give the clients I work with our thank-you-letter envelope, I explain that even though our funders find it important to see the statistics of what we do, it is even more important for them to see the thank you letters & photos clients send us because those are what really reflect the value they place on making their houses homes. Anyone looking at our web site should go to the link of thank-you-letters to get a true understanding of the meaning of this work. Sonia Sasson
I’m so proud of the good work that you and your organization are doing. Very few people are able to “give” their time and energy to a “payless” job; I know how much effort goes into volunteering and feel that your gift of giving is of such enormous importance to those who really are in need…
Thanks you for being YOU!
Emily