CPG Foundation Furniture Bank

 Addressing Homelessness in RI 

There is a robust ecosystem of non profits working to address homelessness in RI, and there are dozens of nonprofits out there pursuing affordable housing projects and supportive housing. And the many other critical things to help some of the most vulnerable members of our population. 

What almost every single one of them is unable to address or they are losing sight of is the fact that when someone is lucky enough to get one of these homes it’s a empty shell, it’s a house , not a home.

And when that happens and they do not have the resources to fill it up with furniture it never feels like a home, and they end up back on the streets. 

And what we have seen is by giving these people furniture, allowing them to select and partake in the process, it improves their quality of life. It makes that house or unit a Home 

And it leads to 36% higher retention than if they did not get that kind of support. 

Through our statewide network of non-profits we have identified 4000 homeless people per year that they are serving and providing housing to. 

Of which according to our partners About 85% would like our help and would love to benefit from our FREE furniture program. Which means we have a total population every year that would love our support of 3400 families.

We have a proven model and have been operating locally with a grass roots staff since June 2022. We have no payroll and rely on partners and volunteers.  

We currently have served over 200 families and completely furnished over 200 homes-units. 

We have a concrete plan and roadmap to make some capital investments and to serve every homeless client in RI. 

And what we are doing right now is we are raising a small pilot, a seed grant to do a pilot program  to expand our infostructure to be able to not only take donations from our partners who are collecting items from peoples homes but actually take it directly from our community members who would like to give back and just need us to pick it up from them which will significantly expand our inventory. 

We are in a unique and perfect position to significantly scale our efforts, increase our non profit partners, and make more houses a Home!