"So what do you think?"
Standing in the donation drop-off center of Charleston's Habitat for Humanity ReStore, cashier Elizabeth Brunelli waited for Jonathan Reckford's answer. He'd been led on a tour of the facility, from the sprawling mural outside the store to its community center, and he stood next to one of the ReStore's transport trucks, which haul hundreds of tons of furniture and home goods back to the store each year.
"I'm very impressed - it's a great store," he said.
Reckford has seen quite a few Habitat ReStores as CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, one of the world's largest housing nonprofits, and toured Charleston's store Tuesday during his visit to the 2015 West Virginia Housing Conference, an annual event focused on addressing housing-related issues across the state, including homelessness, elder and disability housing, housing affordability and housing discrimination.
Reckford delivered the opening speech for the conference, slated to continue today and Thursday with workshops on topics ranging from "Technology for Elder Livability and Health" to "Current Drug Trends and Drug Use in Our Communities."
For Reckford, the discussions during the conference are important, as housing affordability has reached its lowest point in the United States in a century, driven by skyrocketing land prices and stagnant incomes.
"What we are doing is more critical than ever," he said. "Right after food and water, housing is the most basic human need, and what we have to do is make that personal for people, and to help them understand that it's the foundation for families to lift themselves up."
Reckford said it's often difficult to impress on decision makers, from politicians to corporate leaders who frequently have grown up with adequate housing, that access to housing is a serious problem for many.
"I think our collective challenge is to help everyone else to understand how critical housing is," Reckford said. "We have to raise our collective game."
Zach Brown, executive director of the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness, said addressing homelessness in the state is particularly challenging, in part, because of the stereotypes that persist about the homeless. It costs five times as much to allow a homeless person to remain on the street than to house them, Brown said, and developing affordable housing is easier than changing persistent attitudes at the community and policy-making levels.
"We don't ever find anyone who has chosen to be homeless, and that's sort of the prevailing mythology these days," Brown said. "There are often other factors at play - acute mental illness, chronic health conditions, substance abuse - things that keep people outside.
"There are two things we can do in West Virginia, and that's to go after more funding, in order to produce more housing. That's a truthism, there's no doubt about it, but I think, on the other hand, in West Virginia, we need to better utilize the funding and resources we have in a very targeted and smart way."
The ReStore accepts donations of building materials, furniture and home items to resell. The store's profits fund about half of Habitat for Humanity's houses - roughly 40 houses a year.
During Reckford's tour, Amy McLaughlin, the ReSore's director, told him about some of the more unique features of the store, like the rain garden in its back parking lot, which siphons rain water away from the storm drains, and the community center, where Habitat for Humanity teachers host home ownership classes for Habitat participants and the general community.
"We now have an ongoing homeowner education program, the Master Homeowner Program, that people from the community are coming into, as well as those in the Habitat Program," said Shawn Means, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Kanawha and Putnam counties. "Every time we would go out into the community and tell a Rotary Club or someone the kind of training we were doing with our homeowners, they'd go 'I wish I'd had that when I bought a house,' or when we talk about conflict resolution and neighborhood relations, they'd say, 'I wish my neighbor would've had something like that.'
"There's really good feedback that has told us the community needs this, and we take that very seriously."
To learn more about the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, visit http://charlestonwvrestore.org. To learn more about the 2015 West Virginia Housing Conference, including a full schedule of workshops, visit www .wvhousingconference.com.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.