The written requests don’t offer many details, but they say enough.
Each reveals what’s going on behind a closed door in the nation’s capital. They tell of families sleeping on floors, living rooms missing couches and children trying to do virtual learning without desks or tables.
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Message: I have 5 kids that needs beds they are sleeping on the floor is this something we can get help with.
Message: Please I am a mentally disability consumer …. Please I need help with furniture. I live in DC.
Message: … I have very limited mobility due to chronic arthritis, asthma combined with major depression, sleep equilibrium disorder, hypertension and I'm on insulin. So most of my days are in my room. Please help me get a TV.
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Those are just a few of the pleas that have been received by FurnishHopeDC, a nonprofit that was born during the pandemic to provide furniture and household items to residents of Wards 7 and 8. Niki Mock, a Bethesda resident whose volunteer work took her into those neighborhoods early in the pandemic, created the nonprofit after noticing two things: Her neighbors getting rid of quality furniture and people a few Zip codes away in need of it.
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“There is more than enough for everyone to have a couch and a dining table and chairs,” Mock says about the amount of furniture in the Washington region. “It was just a matter of: How do we get it from one place to another?”
At first, she used her pickup truck and a box truck to collect the furniture from those who were giving it away and drove it to those who needed it. That system worked but wasn’t efficient. Each exchange required a string of text messages or phone calls. The process also didn’t allow recipients the dignity of making choices. They couldn’t look through all the furniture she had collected and decide which pieces would work best for their families.
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In May, that changed. The organization moved into a building in Southeast Washington and created a space where people could come and pick out what they needed. They could look at three tables and choose the one they liked best. They could walk over to a stack of folded sheets and pick the set that would make their children happiest. They could basically shop free. They could then request the furniture be delivered to their homes, also at no cost.
“There’s no furniture store in Ward 8,” says Adriane Herbert, who ended up volunteering one day and never stopped. Mock now considers Herbert a partner. “There’s no Target or Walmart where you can get the kinds of things you need for your household.”
Herbert lives in public housing with her five children, who range in age from 6 months old to 17 years old, and when they moved from Columbia Heights to Anacostia, she struggled to find a bed for one of the rooms. Even when furniture was made available free by individuals or organizations, she still needed to find the money to pay for a truck and movers.
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While delivering items for FurnishHopeDC, she has witnessed what she describes as “severe need.” She has seen children sleeping on deflated air mattresses or directly on the floor in apartments infested with mice and bugs. She has seen dressers that once held four drawers down to only two, making them hazards for kids who might try to climb on them. She has seen parents cry upon seeing the furniture delivered. A mom of five children, including two sets of twins, “was so appreciative, she couldn’t even talk because she was crying so hard,” Herbert says.
Herbert tells me about that woman and other people she has come to know in the neighborhood on the day we talk about a challenge the organization is now facing. A place that has furnished homes for others now finds itself without a home. It had to leave the space it occupied on Good Hope Road on Jan. 7, and Mock and Herbert are now hoping to find a new place in Ward 8. In the meantime, they plan to resort to earlier practices and use the trucks to collect and deliver furniture.
“So many people have come crying and asking, ‘Where are you going to be? Who is going to help us now? What organization can you refer us to?’ ” Herbert says. “And we don’t have answers.”
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Ashley Kenon says when she learned the organization was leaving, she turned to a computer and started looking for available real estate. She found nothing.
The 34-year-old who lives with her husband and children in Anacostia has volunteered with the organization, but she first came to it as someone who needed help. She says she used to drive a bus for Metro before a surgery left her with damaged nerves and led her to develop an addiction to opioids. She escaped that addiction’s clutch three years ago, she says, but not before it took much from her. When she walked into FurnishHopeDC, her family had lived in a mostly empty apartment for nearly two years. The organization, she says, gave them beds, a couch, a table, chairs, pots and pans, a shower curtain and even framed pictures to put on the wall.
“For once, since we’ve been living here, the house felt like a home,” she says. “It made my kids so happy.”
On their last day in the neighborhood, Mock posted this message on the organization’s Facebook page: “As of yesterday, we helped furnish close to 200 homes, created a FHDC family of caring volunteers & clients & the people who lived in the neighborhood … When I pulled up in my truck, so many rushed to help me unload, & when I left at night, & yes, after dark even though I was warned not to, people on the street would yell, ‘bye Ms. Niki, drive safe’ … I will find another space in Ward 8, & until then, we have my box truck, storage space, each other & a lot of heart!!”
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Mock is aware of the racial dynamics that can make a White woman’s presence in a majority Black neighborhood controversial. She has heard White people express worry for her safety and Black people say help should come from within their own community. She has never felt unsafe in that neighborhood, she says, and she hopes to eventually turn the organization over to Ward 8 residents. But right now, she says, people need help and she can’t sit back and do nothing.
She has read those written pleas that have come in.
Message: I’m presently sleeping on the floor I’m low income and can’t afford to buy a mattress and box spring.
Message: I was homeless I just got my housing voucher I don't have anything for my kids beds nothing.
Message: I am in need of Winter clothings for my kids. Please any help will do.
Read more from Theresa Vargas