By ETHAN THERRIEN
As the holiday season begins, many families are left with little more than a roof over their heads. Welcome Home Neighbor, a volunteer-based group dedicated to helping local families transition from homeless shelters to stable housing, has been transforming empty sets of walls into cozy, personalized homes — one community-provided furniture donation at a time.
Co-coordinators Jamila Larson and Mark Betancourt kickstarted their efforts in May 2022, after they met a mother and her two children moving from a homeless shelter to an empty apartment in Greenbelt.
The duo offered to help the family with the transition and furnishing process — a decision that eventually led to the creation of Welcome Home Neighbor. The HOPE (Hyattsville Organization for a Positive Environment) listserv helped the two get their message out to the community.
“We decided to put an appeal out in the neighborhood,” Larson said. “They responded pretty fast. We had everything we needed for their two-bedroom apartment. [The family] had zero furniture. People sent us donations; Mark rented a U-Haul and recruited a couple of his neighbors.”
“There were four of us that spent a good chunk of that rainy Mother’s Day weekend setting up beds, making deliveries,” Larson added. “It was such an amazing experience.”
In the two years since, Larson and Betancourt have helped over 60 families with the furnishing process. To the duo, their efforts are not for any sort of fame or recognition, but to give back to the community that, at one point, did the same for them.
“We always try to stress that someone did this for us when we were younger; when we were moving into our first homes,” Betancourt said. “That’s all we’re doing for you. We’re just stepping in and being that for you, because everybody needs it.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prince George’s County had programs funded by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to help lower-income families furnish their homes. However, around December 2022, pandemic funding dried up — leaving no reliable outlet in the Hyattsville area for those in need to acquire furniture.
“Right before Christmas time, we had five or six families that all had moved out of the shelter and had thought they were going to get furniture,” Betancourt said. “Suddenly, the program supporting them was gone. So we did three or four families just in the week before Christmas, just trying to get kids in beds so they could wait for Santa in beds instead of on the floor.”
But their efforts are far from simply a holiday trend. Larson says that their furniture donation drive runs throughout the entire year — and that it’s important to remember that homelessness is a year-round issue.
“Homelessness is not a season,” said Larson. “People become homeless all year long and they need help all year long, so it’s important that our effort extends the entire year.”
It’s not easy. While Larson and Betancourt want to grow their donation drive further, limited storage space has been a roadblock to achieving that goal. The two rent a small storage unit in Chillum to store the furniture they receive from the community — but it’s often not enough.
“We are extremely committed to finding a permanent storage space, or at least a long-term storage space that is larger, where we can organize everything and get more stuff on hand,” Betancourt said. “People regularly reach out and say, ‘Hey, I have this really nice piece of furniture. Can you guys use it?’”
“We would love to have the storage to be able to get that so we can just hand it off to somebody when it gets requested,” Betancourt added. “Right now, we’re kind of struggling with a small space that we can’t really afford.”
Throughout their efforts, the two are grateful to the Hyattsville community for allowing Welcome Home Neighbor to function — through continued support, delivery assistance and charitable furniture donations that end up with the right people, in the right places.
“They are this work — they are the ones doing it,” Betancourt said.
“It’s a community effort, obviously bigger than any one or two people,” Larson noted. “That is just what we do as a community, because it does feel like a natural part of our lives at this point.”
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Those interested in helping out or donating furniture can email Welcome Home Neighbor at neighborwelcomehome@gmail.com, or contact Larson directly at jamilalarson@yahoo.com.
Ethan Therrien is an undergraduate journalism student at the University of Maryland.
