DETROIT – Be aware something special is going on -- it's called Humble Design.
"Because every day and every house that we go to it does keep us humble," said Treger Strasberg.
Humble Design takes donated furniture and supplies it to families coming out of homelessness.
"Now when you do a house, I mean, you are not just bringing a table or a couple of chairs. You are literally furnishing an entire house," said Mitch Albom.
"No. 1 beds -- always beds.," said Strasberg. "Then we do the furniture, which is the big pieces the sofas, the rugs, the tables, the coffee tables, the kitchen tables, but we also do artwork curtains, we do knickknacks, we do silverware, pots, pans, homework stations. Anything you have in your home, we put in our homes."
Strasberg started by helping one family five years ago. Humble Design now employs several full-time staffers -- many volunteers -- and has a massive warehouse filled with donations from individuals, estates, or, surprisingly, companies like Gormans.
"When you see something on the floor that doesn't sell they have to send it back to the manufacturer, which costs them money and costs the manufacturer money to ship it back," said Strasberg. "We give them a tax credit for it and they actually save money by giving it to us."
Humble Design has now done more than 360 homes, always getting the same grateful reactions.
"We had a family who the children had never slept in a bed before. They were born in the shelters," said Strasberg. "The mom sits on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slump and she just starts bawling, and so the kids who bypass all their toys just get right into bed and it hit me then that they don't care about anything else -- the pictures, the artwork -- they just want a bed to sleep in that night."
Already doing up to five houses a week, Strasberg said that if she could get a truck or two donated, they might furnish every transitional home in the city. It's a simple concept: the haves helping the have-nots.
Strasberg and Humble Design prove that sharing is caring in the heart of Detroit.
Heart of Detroit