CORE in Ohio helps homes with furniture

Community Outreach Resources Exchange is a furniture bank, a faith-based charity that distributes used

 furniture and household goods to people who can't afford them.

For 11 years, CORE has been quietly helping what it calls neighbors in need — fire victims, battered women, people working their way out of homelessness, refugees and others who need help outfitting a household.

On Saturday mornings, CORE opens its doors to clients who have been screened to verify their need. Typically, 30 to 40 families show up for the weekly giveaway, where they can choose from donated furniture, mattresses, linens, appliances and other items.

Each family comes with a voucher identifying its needs, and a volunteer escorts the family through the warehouse and helps it choose. More volunteers — many of them from Truly Reaching You Ministries, a transitional program for people leaving prison — move the selections to a loading dock and help the family load its vehicle.

Clients may choose a limited number of items, but the number can change depending on the volume of goods available and the number of people who show up. Their vouchers are good for 30 days, so they can come back if they don't find what they need on the first visit.

CORE was started in 1998 by the St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Bernard Church to provide mattresses and bed frames to people in the Hispanic community, said Phillip Howard, a retiree who volunteers as CORE's unofficial general manager.

Eventually, the organization grew into a furniture bank and in 2002 moved from a storage facility at Canal Place in downtown Akron to a warehouse adjacent to the Marc's store in Cuyahoga Falls. Howard said it used to pick up donations in a step van loaned from Shaw Auto Care until it was able to create its own fleet of two trucks this year, thanks to a grant obtained by Hudson Community Chapel and a donation of a box truck from Catholic Charities.

The furniture bank works closely with 63 churches, agencies and other organizations that provide support and refer and screen clients, he said.

CORE serves about 1,400 families a year and distributes around 6,400 major pieces of furniture. It receives items from individual donors as well as other agencies and a few businesses, and it gives clothing and other items it can't use to charities that can.