“There’s no money exchanged,” said 39-year-old Regina Carter, who sources furniture and home goods otherwise destined for a landfill, and donates them to fellow New Yorkers. “We’re just placing things in communities of need.”
Regina Carter, a 39-year-old resident of NYCHA’s Morris Houses in the South Bronx, won a $200,000 prize on Tuesday—with no strings attached—recognizing her yearslong efforts to organize furniture giveaways for anyone in need.
Morris Houses became Carter’s first home after aging out of the city’s foster care system, she said, and she’s lived there for the last 18 years. Those experiences, she told City Limits, convinced her that “when your home is not in order, you’re not in order.”
She said she recognized many public housing residents’ need for functional furniture, and how they often lacked the time or money to secure it, something she’d experienced herself…