One of the big challenges faced by someone coming out of homelessness is that they often don't have anything for their new home.
That's why April Alford-Barclay started nonprofit Welcome Home Dayton, which provides all the furnishings for the apartment.
From the silverware and dishes, to bed and linens, to towels and bath care, the team of volunteers make sure the space is ready to welcome their client home.
“We don’t just say, “here,here’s a bed, here’s a dining table,” Alford-Barclay said, looking around a pretty yellow and blue themed room designed by the group. “We make them leave for the day, we do it all, and then they come home and we do, like, a big reveal.”
Alford-Barclay points to a Bee Gees poster hanging on the wall above a small, black cafe table in a studio apartment in Dayton. She said she asked the apartment’s occupant who their favorite artist was.
“And she said, the Bee Gees and the Animals,” Alford-Barcaly recalled. “So I had this poster made for her, and if you take a picture of the little wavelength there, it actually plays the album on spotify.”
“Our board, we like to use the word dignified."
Alford-Barclay was inspired to create Welcome Home Dayton based on her own experience with homelessness with her mother when she was 6 years old.
“And I remember people giving us things, you know, clothes with holes in it or food that they wouldn’t want to consume, and it’s like, we’re still human, we’re still people,” she said.
“Our board, we like to use the word dignified. Like we want to treat them with dignity,” Alford Barclay said, her voice growing stronger. “We have so many clients who have been looked down upon.”
Client welcomed home
Jenny is one of Welcome Home Dayton's clients. Jenny experienced homelessness after leaving an abusive relationship and WYSO is not using her real name for her safety and privacy.
“So I got married to an American. I came from another country, and when I got to America I was under excessive abuse," she said. "I was physically abused, metally, emotionally, and psychologically abused and I had to go to the women's shelter because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I stayed there and I didn’t have a job. It was miserable. It was a dark - it was the darkest moment and period of my life. Darkest.”
Jenny is now living in this apartment that April and the Welcome Home Dayton team have been furnishing.
A plush blue velvet sofa with yellow throw pillows perks up the space. Across the room a cheerful yellow bedspread covers a double bed with a matching blue velvet throw draped across the end.
Add a couple colorful woodblock prints from etsy on the walls, and the overall effect has a middle eastern flair.
Looking around the cheerful basement apartment, Jenny smiled remembering the day of the apartment's reveal.
“It was just so beautiful,” she said. “It was full of love. When I came into the studio it was just love jumping in my face, jumping all over me. Like it was love.”
Custom design
Alford-Barclay throws in little custom touches like books, scented candles and children's games.
“We’ve had 12 clients and I would say the majority of them are families with children,” Alford-Barclay said. “The biggest issue with us is funding. So because we are so small and just starting out, we can’t get the big grants because we don’t have that kind of budget. So we raise funds.”
When her mom died in 2020, Alford-Barclay took $10,000 of her insurance money and poured it into the non-profit.
“We did a few clients with that,” Alford-Barclay said. “It usually takes four to five thousand dollars per client.“
Alford-Barclay and her team at Welcome Home Dayton are all volunteers. They are looking to grow the organization with a grant writer and more board members.
She said the organization is also looking for someone to donate a warehouse space that could hold furniture and host fundraisers.
“Every install we do, we feel great about it afterwards,” Alford-Barclay said, looking at photos of past installations on her phone.
One home at a time
Right now, she’s excited to be spreading the love one home at a time.
“Most of the time we get, ‘Oh, I didn’t know this existed,’ Alford-Barclay said.
Recently a woman mistakenly called her thinking it was Welcome Dayton, which is the program to welcome immigrants, run by the city of Dayton.
Alford-Barclay told the woman no, it was Welcome Home Dayton. And then explained what the organization did.
The woman on the other end of the phone turned out to be from St. Vincent De Paul.
“And she said 'Oh my goodness. Yes we have clients that need your service,” Alford-Barclay said, laughing. “I don’t believe in coincidences. That happened for a reason.”
Welcome Home Dayton will be hosting a charity bingo night fundraiser on April 9 at the Yellow Cab Tavern.
