PONTIAC, Mich. – The Furniture Bank of Metro Detroit is in urgent need of donations. The bank says over 120 families in the area are waiting for furniture.
The bank says donations often slow during winter months, but that doesn’t mean the need does. The two main items families are going without are dining tables and dressers.
Steve Mattar is a longtime board member of the Furniture Bank of Metro Detroit. He says each night, 20,000 children in the area will go to sleep without a bed.
“They’ll be on the floor, or in a chair, on a couch and it’s just heartbreaking,” Mattar said.
The furniture bank works to keep kids and families out of that situation, specifically aiming to provide essential furniture for families who have walked through homelessness, domestic violence, floods, fires, and sickness.
“You know, when people think about the basic needs that folks have, such as food, and clothing, and shelter, what they forget about is furniture,” Mattar said.
Donations have slowed down with the cold weather and it not being “house-selling” season, Mattar said.
“Right now, Kyla, we have 40 families in line for furniture who we can’t fulfill the need because we just don’t have it in our warehouse,” he said. “It’s a really hard thing to say to them, ‘We’re going to do it, we just don’t have it yet.’”
Local 4 asked Mattar how to donate to the bank.
“The donation process is really quite simple, you just go to our website, which is furniture-bank.org and up in the upper right hand corner, there’s a big orange donate button and you can donate furniture or you can donate money and that also helps,” Mattar said.
A time is then scheduled for the bank to pick up the furniture from the home of anyone donating.
Mattar says they offer the option as a way to make it more convenient to donate.