Mother-daughter duo turns Jeffersonville warehouse into full-service furniture bank for less fortunate

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- Two southern Indiana women worked for months to open their furniture operation. But this isn't the typical buy-and-sell storefront that dots some of the Louisville area's most popular shopping districts.

Happy Home Furniture Bank was designed to help people moving from the street or a shelter into permanent housing. Christy Spence and Meghan Rogge run it out of an old warehouse space in Jeffersonville, opening in November and immediately helping families who need donations and volunteers. While looking for a bigger space to store pieces for her company — La Storia Home Furnishings — Spence got the idea to start a furniture bank.

"We know that a house without any furnishings isn't really a home," Spence said Thursday.

Happy Home serves the entire Louisville area, providing furnishings and decor to people coming out of homelessness, domestic violence situations or other life situations that leave them with little else than the clothes on their backs.

"This is something that is rampant, and we have I mean thousands ... of kids, parents, even just individuals that sleep on the floor, don't even have a mattress," Spence said. "We want to be able to give them some dignity to build up some confidence. And when they get all of these furnishings, when we furnish a house, it's theirs."

Spence and Rogge — her daughter — provide everything from couches to cookware.

"You can just tell how grateful and thankful they are for us coming in and not just providing a couch," Rogge said. "We provide all of it."

Happy Home works with social service groups like Louisville's Coalition for the Homeless to be matched with clients. And aside from donations of furniture or money, the mother-daughter duo said volunteers are needed to help organize their warehouse, figuring out what needs to go and what can be fixed and donated.

"It'd really just be great to be able to provide all of this for as many families in as many households as we can," Rogge said.

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