Furniture Poverty
A Hidden Crisis
For nearly 25 years, A Wider Circle has led the way in alleviating furniture poverty in the Greater Washington, DC region. Every year, our Essential Support program provides more than 3,500 households with beds, basic home furnishings, and other home essentials.
However, the crisis of furniture poverty persists in our region, across the country, and beyond. In fact, over 66% of American households at some point in time will lack critical furniture items that make their homes safe and functional for their families.
Shedding light on this hidden crisis is just the first step to working towards long-term solutions to ensure all families have the items they need for a safe, stable, and functional home.
Furniture poverty by the Numbers
Data Source: “ A Bed for Every Head,” August 2025 briefing by Furnish Together, a coalition of US-based furniture banks.
What is Furniture Poverty?
Furniture poverty is defined by by the US-based Furnish Together coalition as “the inability to access, afford, or maintain essential household furniture and goods for a functional, safe, and healthy home.”
Furniture stability is a term A Wider Circle has adopted to signify that a family has all the basic items they need to function well and that these items are safe to use and in dignity condition (meaning they are free from rips, dents, and stains; they are items people would pass on to their loved ones).
Furniture poverty can force families to use trash bags for clothing storage and rely on folding chairs as their only seating options.
91% of the most recent families served by A Wider Circle’s Essential Support program reported that, after receiving furniture, they were now better able to provide for themselves or their families.
The importance of affordable housing and solutions to end homelessness are rightfully emphasized in the social services realm as well as public and private funding priorities. At A Wider Circle, we have seen that merely having access to housing is not the same as having a place to call “home” if it is missing basic furniture. If four walls are the container, then furnishings are the ingredients that give the space utility, functionality, comfort, safety, respite, and shape.
Learn more about furniture poverty and find tremendous national and regional data about incidence, prevalence, and impact in this July 2025 data snapshot.
Return to this webpage in August 2025 for an updated version of A Wider Circle’s July 2024 report, A Hidden Crisis: Understanding and Addressing Furniture Poverty.
What We’re Working On
We’re working with legislative experts and policymakers to shine a spotlight on the problem of furniture poverty and find creative solutions to address it. On July 22, 2025, A Wider Circle, through the Furnish Together Coalition, hosted the first known Capitol Hill briefing on Furniture Poverty at the Rayburn House Office Building. Read more about it in this article from Furniture Today and in this recent interview on our blog.
Additional Resources
You can check out the following resources for further reading, watching, or listening about furniture poverty:
- Understanding Furniture Poverty from the UK’s End Furniture Poverty campaign
- The Power of Furniture to Fight Poverty from The Business of Home
- Furniture Poverty – Season 3, episode 1 of the Sociology Ruins Everything podcast, featuring AWC Chief Program Officer Eddy Ameen and sociology researcher/AWC intern Gergana Hardy
- The Sleepless Lamp – This video from Ikea Canada illustrates the problem “Sleep Poverty” for children who lack beds, bedding, or other essentials needed for a good night’s sleep.
