🔒On the Record: Nonprofit furniture bank also provides ‘housing stability and dignity’

As executive director of Furniture Friends, Tae Chong leads a Westbrook-based nonprofit provider of gently used furniture to families in need across southern Maine; in 2025 alone, it helped 862 households and about 2,000 people. Mainebiz sat down with Chong inside the 7,700-square-foot warehouse of Maine’s only furniture bank. The group, staffed by six employees, has an annual budget of around $500,000. Mainebiz: What is the mission of Furniture Friends? Tae Chong: It’s a furniture bank, and what we provide is housing stability and dignity for people in poverty or crisis. That includes anyone coming out of a shelter, fleeing domestic violence or kids aging out of foster care — people who need immediate furniture. We work with over 150 social service agency partners to make that happen. MB: You are working primarily with partners in the Portland area? TC: That’s correct. And our dream is to be big enough so that other organizations like Good Shepherd Food Bank can come to us to take furniture to help their communities. MB: You were saying that a lot of people previously living on the streets may get an apartment or home but they don’t have the furniture. That’s where you come in? TC: One of the biggest problems in Maine is that we will spend millions of dollars building new apartment buildings, but there’s no money for people in poverty to furnish those homes. MB: Where does the furniture come from? TC: We get a lot of furniture from individual donors, but also from institutions like hotels when they are renovating or from schools like Colby College, which donated furniture from about 300 dorm rooms that was otherwise going to go into the landfill and would have cost money to throw away. The contractor that Colby hired decided to donate to us. Initially it would have been a tax write-off for Colby, but now it’s been used to furnish the homes of hundreds of families. MB: What type of furniture do you accept and distribute? TC: We will only accept what we call fundamental furniture — a bed, a kitchen table and chairs, a sofa or recliner and lamps — the very basic stuff. We don’t take things like dressers. MB: And then how do you get the furniture to the folks who need it? TC: Half of the people who get our furniture will come to our warehouse and pick it up. For the other half, we have volunteers who deliver to our clients — including local high school students. It’s transformative for young people and other volunteers to go to a house where a family has absolutely nothing. On one delivery that I helped out on, a single mom was living with two girls sleeping on the floor, and this was the first time they were going to have beds and a kitchen table. The kids were able to now invite friends over and have a place to do their homework other than a container box. MB: You said that furniture helps create household stability. How so? TC: One of the things that people don’t understand is that fundamental furniture increases mental and physical health as well as employability and school attendance, because if your kids are ashamed to come home, they’re less likely to go to school. If you have a bad night’s sleep, you’re less likely to be up and ready to go to work. MB: What’s the role of furniture in tackling Maine’s housing crisis? TC: Fundamental furniture is the last missing piece in housing stability. It actually helps solve the housing crisis, and it’s the most affordable form of housing stability. MB: What would it take for there to be more furniture banks in Maine? TC: There can be more furniture banks in Maine if the state creates the right incentives for people to donate furniture for any state-funded housing development. MB: Do you ever envision Furniture Friends growing into a large, regional operation? TC: We’d love to be a Good Shepherd model where we would warehouse large quantities of furniture, and then smaller furniture banks could come to us and pick up what is needed in their community.