Nonprofit group helps furnish, decorate the new homes of formerly homeless Sonoma County families

Volunteer Laura Kenig had one last question for 16-year-old D.J. Johnson: How tall is he?

Standing outside his brand new apartment on Stony Point Road in Santa Rosa, Johnson told Kenig he is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, maybe 6 feet. She nodded and headed back inside.

He wouldn’t know until about an hour later when he walked into his freshly decorated and furnished bedroom why Kenig had asked.

Kenig wanted to make sure the mirror she was hanging in his new bedroom was at just the right height. She wanted nothing out of place.

This was, after all, Johnson’s new home. And just hours ago it was largely empty.

But now it was full, brimming with dishes and pots and pans. Beds were made. Rugs covered the floor.

The bathroom had a shower curtain. There were towels on hooks. There were pieces of art on the walls.

There were even cookies and fruit — and a welcome home note — on the new kitchen table.

“I appreciate you,” Johnson told Kenig and two other volunteers who remained to show him and his dad David around the apartment they’d only spent a couple of nights in. “Thank you guys very much.”

This is what Kenig and the other volunteers working for the nonprofit group Welcoming Home do — help formerly homeless people who are transitioning into stable housing furnish and decorate their new places.

After all, Welcoming Home founder and president Marsha Roberts said, it isn’t just a roof and four walls that make a home, but the comfort and dignity that come with having quality furniture and home goods.

“We have a really high standard for the furniture that we take and put in people’s homes,” Roberts said. “We think it’s really important that whatever they get is quality. It impacts their confidence and self respect.”

Welcoming Home has been doing this in Marin County for eight years and in Sonoma County for four.

The way it works is relatively simple but takes a significant amount of volunteer-driven coordination to pull off.

First a family is vetted by partner social services agencies and recommended to San Rafael-based Welcoming Home’s services. Sometimes they have just moved into a place, but in other cases, they may have lived in an apartment or home for some time but just not been able to furnish it adequately.

Volunteers interview family members, asking about particular needs and personal likes to get a better sense of how to outfit their new place.

It’s a process grounded in dignity, Roberts said.

Volunteers then take their list of needs to a stable of regular donors and try to match requests with what folks have ready to give. If there are missing pieces they sometimes use platforms like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace to either buy quality used items or gently suggest the seller donate it.

Because storage is expensive, Welcoming Home does not take big items and keep them until a need arises.

Instead, they operate something they call a “virtual inventory” in which donors will upload photos and information on larger items they are willing to donate. That way, the folks at Welcoming Home don’t have to store the item, but know it is available for any upcoming project.

They don’t do small projects. They zero in on families that need an entirely fresh start.

“If someone only needs a couple of things, it’s not our model to do that,” Roberts said.

So when D.J.’s dad, David, walked back into his brand new two-bedroom apartment and saw the dishes in the cupboards, the pots and pans in drawers and even a laundry basket on wheels, he was nearly speechless.

“This blew my mind. It’s just incredible,” he said, sitting on his new couch in the apartment. “Thanks very much.”

Johnson has been working his way back from a stroke that affects his speech and mobility of one arm. He’d been staying at a Catholic Charities shelter for months, while D.J. stayed with friends.

“You made a grim situation brighter,” Johnson said.

For Roberts, the work is about restoring and fortifying dignity.

“We are pretty proud of what we are able to do,” she said. “We want people to feel good coming home.”

And that means being picky with donations.

“If you would feel comfortable giving this to someone in your family, great, assuming you like your family,” Roberts said. “But if it’s something you wouldn’t give to your family, we don’t want it either.”

For another Welcoming Home client, Isabell Lee, finding stable housing in Rohnert Park was a huge boon. But she, too, had no furniture, no decorations, no appliances to make her new place a home.

Lee estimates she was homeless the better part of four years.

She and her son had stayed at housing offered by Athena House, and COTS and then Catholic Charities.

It was there, with the help of a housing navigator, that Lee found a low-income apartment for her and her son.

Good news. Except for one thing.

“I had nothing. I had zero. I had no bed. All we had was clothes, maybe toiletries.

“We were in shared living. It was a place but it wasn’t our own place,” she said.

When Lee was partnered with Welcoming Home, the results were remarkable, she said.

And that was even after her teen son expressed some early misgivings about a stranger making decisions for his space.

“Beforehand he was telling me that he wanted to decorate his own room,” she said.

But then he saw the gaming chair he asked for. And the couch and entertainment center and television volunteers had up and running in their apartment.

They even put an island in the kitchen to make it easier for Lee to cook.

“It felt completely overwhelming,” Lee said. “I was so overcome with joy. I didn’t think, for one, that I would find a place. Then this happened and it felt like I really had a home.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.