Furniture Bank is a registered charity and social enterprise that has served the Greater Toronto Area since 1998.
Our mission is to transfer gently used furniture and household goods donated to us by individuals or corporations to people who have recently transitioned out of homelessness. We help turn an empty space into a true home with a kitchen table to enjoy meals, a comfortable space to share stories of the day and bug free beds for safe sweet dreams. In 2012, we helped 2,739 families or over 5,400 people including over 1,800 children.
Furniture Bank works with 73 shelters and agencies serving women and children leaving abusive situations, refugee families seeking safety and youth at risk, as well as Toronto’s Streets to Homes program. In fact, Streets to Homes clients represent almost 26% of our client base.
Our operations, a social enterprise called Furniture Link, now has three trucks on the road and we lease a 30,000 square foot warehouse to serve our clients and donors. Employees and volunteers in the Furniture Link program include individuals such as at risk youth, the learning or emotionally disabled, people receiving Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefits and other marginalized people with limited employment opportunities.
By transferring items from donor to client, we help to divert these materials from landfills and in 2012, that volume was over 1,500 metric tonnes of material that would have otherwise been waste.
