OLD TOWN, Maine — When someone moves from the homeless shelter into an apartment or residence, a volunteer alliance called Welcome to Housing helps to make it a home by filling it with dishes, pots and pans, beds and even toilet paper, if the roll is empty.
Welcome to Housing, which collects donated items and gives them away to those in need, is now itself in need, with the space it has occupied for more than four years going away, said Chris Olsen, a real estate broker who started the all-volunteer program five years ago.
“We have been very fortunate to have the space in Old Town donated for the last 4-plus years,” Olsen said in a Tuesday email, referring to the Old Town Plaza locale.
The group is looking for a replacement warehouse somewhere in the Bangor-Old Town area.
“We need to find a new warehouse before June 10,” Olsen said Tuesday. “If we can’t locate a new warehouse, we will have to close up.”
“Since I heard the news about having to find a new home … I have had a cloud over my head and a knot in my gut,” he said in a post on the group’s Facebook page.
Welcome to Housing was started by a grant that the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter received to help people with mental illness with security deposits or household items for new apartments, and was continued by Olsen and other volunteers in 2011 after funds dried up.
“We are like a thrift store but we don’t charge,” said Olsen, whose volunteer affiliations have included the Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis and Big Brothers Big Sisters. “We raise money to buy hard-to-get items like new towels, flatware, etc.”
Alliance members collect donated household items and furniture, including truckloads of mattresses and box springs from hotels when they upgrade, and then turn around and donate them, the group’s website states. Caseworkers or clergy escort the recipients, who “get to pick out what they need,” the site says. “It is all free.”
Olsen said he is hopeful another empty warehouse will soon become available to the group for free, “if possible,” or at a low cost for the nonprofit.
“We have some small units but need larger space for when we get large volumes of things like beds from hotels,” Olsen said.
Those who want more information can visit WelcomeToHousing.com, or call Christopher Olsen at 745-1287.