With only days until House to Home will be forced to close after Westgate Shopping Centre is demolished, the charity furnishing service still hasn’t found a home of its own.
“We don’t have any prospects yet,” said Suzi Shore Sauvé, House to Home’s founder. “There’s nothing on the table.”
When Shore Sauvé opened the store in December 2021, House to Home serviced refugee families coming to Canada. She’s since expanded her clientele to include immigrant families as well, offering to furnish new homes at a rate of just $100 per person. For these families uprooting their lives to come to Canada, bringing furniture with them is practically a non-option.
But since Westgate Shopping Centre, Ottawa’s oldest mall, announced it would be closing by the end of October for major renovations, Sauvé has been scrambling to find a solution. Now that day is approaching and she hasn’t had any luck.
“I don’t have the space, so I can’t do it on my own,” Shore Sauvé said. “I need a generous donor to step up and donate the space.”
House to Home is one of very few non-profit furnishing services in Ottawa, which means Sauvé Shore has had to begin turning away families in need of furniture as their tenancy deadline looms, something she really does not enjoy doing.
“I turned away two families who are moving, just on the drive here,” Shore Sauvé said in an interview with KT on Oct. 22. “So between yesterday and today, I’ve turned away eight families.”
For Sauvé Shore, the idea for House to Home came from her late father, whose own parents moved to Canada from Russia in the early 20th century.
“Nobody helped them and he said it just would have been so nice that somebody would have, and he passed away just a few days later,” Shore Sauvé said. “And that stayed with me.
“I started this, so I could help people that are just new here.”
Since 2021, House to Home has helped furnish the homes of 2,000 families new to Canada. Today, they have an extensive inventory of all sorts of furniture, dinnerware and all sorts of things you could find in a home. The challenge now is moving all of that inventory before their vacancy deadline in a few days.
Asadullah Rahimi came in search of House to Home’s services in December 2021, after he came to Ottawa from Afghanistan with his wife and six kids.
“I came with a suitcase and my family, but now I have everything in my home, which is all provided from House to Home,” Rahimi said. “So I’m just an example of the 2,000 families we served in the last three years.”
The very next month, he started working for the charity himself. Now nearly four years later, he’s the manager at House to Home.
“He’s my right hand,” Shore Sauvé said. “This whole thing is done together”
For Rahimi, experiencing both sides of the furnishing charity has been a moving experience.
“I have seen many families who got here for their furniture and sometimes when they were asking for some extra things, I was telling them, ‘okay, you can have it,’” Rahimi said. “Sometimes water would come to their eyes because they would not expect what they’re getting.”
Even with only a few days before House to Home’s time at Westgate runs out on Oct. 31, spirits are still high among the charity’s volunteers, hopeful someplace will work out eventually.
“We’re a real community, it’s pretty awesome,” Shore Sauvé said. “We laugh and have a really nice time together.”
It’s a collective attitude that fueled the charity to help thousands of refugee and immigrant families furnish their homes in Ottawa over the past few years. Shore Sauvé is hopeful House to Home will find a new home and that the effort can continue.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve done and I would say I’m content with what I’ve done, except for when my phone keeps ringing with more families,” Shore Sauvé said.
“I just want to keep helping.”