Creating Homes for Newly Arrived Refugees

Home Not Borders mission is to provide displaced persons in the Washington, D.C. area with what they need to thrive and feel at home. Our main program is helping refugees when they first arrive and providing them with all the home goods they need to turn an empty apartment into a welcoming home. By State Department mandate, all refugees must have basic furnishings in their home upon resettlement. If organizations like Homes Not Borders do not step in, the refugee families must pay for these items on their own. Since January 2022, Homes Not Borders has provided full home furnishings (and set up most of the apartments, as well) for 120 families, benefitting 756 individuals. This means providing everything from the sofa to rugs to new dishes to beds and bedding - and even toys and small household appliances. The pace of resettlement has not slowed down since the fall of Kabul in August 2021 and Homes Not Borders is still consistently setting up 6 to 8 full homes each week. We expect this pace to continue at least until the end of 2022 with many Afghan families still coming over from Qatar and other third countries. But with traditional refugee resettlement picking up, paired with new refugees coming over from Ukraine, we only anticipate a marginal slowdown in resettlement come 2023. While Homes Not Borders gets most home furnishing items donated – we have brought in nearly $400,000 in donated items during the first four months of 2022 alone - we still have to buy some new items, and our biggest expense by far is mattresses and bed frames. Due to bed bug issues and mandates from all our resettlement agency partners, all mattresses must be new. In fact, for months now Homes Not Borders has included mattress casings as well, to further ward off any bed bug issues that often occur in multi-family housing. Please help Homes Not Borders purchase more beds, furnishings, and houseware for newly arrived refugees.