Couches for Seating or Shelter?

It was love at first sight: your caramel color, your soft velvet fabric, your low profile; I love how your ends curve in just so. Discoveries like this make a depressing hobby harder.

Maybe someone will come by and swoop up this well-made timeless beauty, I was sure tempted. But more likely is that it becomes a short term bed for a passersby or perhaps it will be dragged off to a corner of a nearby parking lot and turned over for longer term shelter. I’ve noticed that couches on our streets are always stripped of their loose pillows. I imagine they are a coveted, portable commodity for the thousands of people who are living without homes.

Instead of a great bargain, or long term shelter, what if these well-made pieces were used to spur economic activity, resiliency, pride, and, dare I say, joy? Furniture waste is a local issue. It’s heavy, it’s sticking around. Have we lost hope that we can still have a thriving local economy? That prioritizes training and access to good, living wage jobs? That supports regenerative business models like reuse, refurbishment, reupholstery, and resale?

While our society is preoccupied chasing the ultimate technological solution, are we missing a humane solution that is at our fingertips? What if the valuable humans who are left to rot in the streets are sleeping under a key that could get them out of their prison? If that was the question, how would we change our approach to furniture waste management?