Community Furniture Aid > ‘We’re like a food bank but for furniture’

For the past five years, Julian and Marianne Cash have been running Community Furniture Aid (CFA) from their home in Pontycymer, in the Garw Valley. The organisation furnishes the homes of the poorest people living in the Bridgend area, its volunteers arriving in the morning with a van full of donated furniture and leaving when the house can be lived in.

CFA has furnished around 350 homes and part-furnished another 150. At least 1,500 people have been helped in the process and 30 tonnes of furniture have been saved from landfill. The charity does not provide white goods, but is connected to another organisation, Turn2us, that provides them for free to those in need.

Furniture povertyThe inability to afford basic items that contribute to a standard quality of living, such as furniture, appliances and utensils, is known as furniture poverty. It often affects people who are in transition, such as refugees, immigrants, women fleeing domestic violence, or the formerly homeless. It exists only behind closed doors, so is easy to overlook.

‘We’re like a food bank but for furniture’: The volunteers turning houses into homes