As hundreds of homeless residents lined up at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium this morning to take advantage of the quarterly free services offered through Project Homeless Connect, another important event was occurring around the corner at 1540 Market St. A group of women rummaged through a warehouse filled with used furniture, loading up enough pieces to fill a one-bedroom apartment into a U-Haul destined for the Bayview.
Known as Making-It-Home, this small but mighty group of Compass Family Services volunteers has been collecting used furniture and outfitting apartments for the past seven years. Each month, they work with a few formerly homeless families about to be re-homed, helping them get the necessary furnishings to outfit their new residences.
Stephanie Fredericks, a volunteer for the past six years, said Making-It-Home got started when CFS supporters noticed that many of the families moving from shelters to new homes had few or no furnishings to bring with them.
With plenty of people in the community downsizing or refreshing their homes, the group began soliciting donations, connecting the furniture they collected with Compass Family Services clients and furnishing their homes free of charge.
"We're like an HGTV show," one volunteer said while hauling furniture out of storage this morning.
Volunteers and Compass Family Services staff with a formerly homeless family, in a room furnished by Making-It-Home. (Photo: Compass Family Services).
But today's lucky family—a 65-year-old woman and her 6-year-old granddaughter, who were homeless for the past 13 months after losing their previous home—could be one of the program's last beneficiaries.
Since March of this year, Making-It-Home has worked out of about 2,000 square feet of rent-free storage space on the second floor of 1540 Market St. (right next to ArtSpan's temporary artist studios). But with city approval of Build Inc.'s One Oak tower expected to arrive next year, the group's lease will end in February—and Compass Family Services has yet to find a new home for the program.
To keep Making-It-Home alive past February, Compass Family Services needs to secure a new warehouse space at the very minimum, said Erica Kisch, the nonprofit's executive director. Ideally, that space would be rent-free, around 2,000 square feet and centrally located, given that CFS' offices are concentrated in Mid-Market and the Tenderloin. But they'd be willing to make just about any location in the city, or on the immediate outskirts, work.
The program's current storage facility, where couches, mattresses, tables and chairs are piled high and most of the light fixtures don't work.
With storage space rental, staffing, truck rentals and miscellaneous expenses, the entire Making-It-Home program costs about $80,000 per year to keep running. And the current housing crisis has made it even harder for Making-It-Home to stretch a dollar. "More and more families get housed outside of San Francisco," Kisch explained. "It's a lot easier to rent a truck and move the furniture into an apartment in the Tenderloin than it is to do the same thing in Antioch."
As a result, Kisch and team are on the hunt for a corporate sponsorship, so they can grow the program beyond one or two clients a month. "We really need resources to be able to run the program," Kisch said. While a couple of staff members have stepped up to help support the volunteers, Compass Family Services does not have the funds to fully staff the program and offer it to more clients.
"We thought this was a great opportunity for some corporation to take this on and underwrite the whole program," Kisch said, noting that collecting furniture and helping with moves would make excellent employee volunteer opportunities. "It's super satisfying. You take an empty apartment, and you turn it into a cozy home for a family that's just exiting homelessness."
But finding one corporation to take the reins hasn't happened. Stacy Webb, communications and corporate relations manager, is now envisioning three sponsors stepping up to the plate: a storage sponsor, a moving truck sponsor and a retail sponsor to help with furniture donations.
Either way, Compass Family Services and its volunteers hope to find a solution—before they're forced to off-load the existing stock of furnishings to Goodwill and shut the program down.
"We're the only group of people in the city doing this particular job, and we would love to keep doing it," Fredericks said.
Do you know of a potential storage space, or a company that might be interested in sponsoring Making-It-Home? Share your leads in the comments, or email them directly to ekisch AT compass-sf DOT org.
