AUGUSTA — A nonprofit group that gives donated home furnishings and other necessities to local residents in need now has a new home with another local nonprofit also focused on helping people in need.

Project Fresh Start, which provides furniture, kitchen appliances, dishes, linens and other donated home furnishings to anyone who needs them, plans to reopen this week at 12 Spruce St., in the lower level of a building owned by United Community Living Center.

United Community Living Center is now in the process of opening a planned new year-round facility on the main floor of the building to  provide daytime services to local people who are homeless, including a place where they can escape the weather, store their things and, if they wish, connect with service providers for help with their physical and mental health, and get help finding housing.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have Project Fresh Start in our building,” said Betty St. Hilaire, president of United Community Living Center. “It’s a win/win for us and for Project Fresh Start as well as the community that has really missed the service that they provide. Our mission includes helping our unhoused friends find housing so they can move their lives forward. Fresh Start will be key in helping folks get started on that path. We have already helped one newly housed family by providing them with beds and other needed items.”

Other tenants in the building include counseling services.

The volunteer-run Project Fresh Start resumed taking donations April 4. For now it will take donations at the 12 Spruce St. site  from 2-4 p.m. Fridays, 9-11 a.m. Saturdays and 2-4 p.m. Tuesdays. Its entrance is on the back side of the building, facing Family Medicine Institute, and is accessible via a driveway to the right of the building that accesses a lower parking lot.

Donors bringing small items may stop by with them, while donors with larger items are asked to contact Fresh Start ahead of time by emailing [email protected] or calling or texting 242-4310.

Officials anticipate they’ll resume giving items away Wednesday by appointment. By scheduling appointments, the organization can provide people looking for items privacy and avoid overcrowding. Those appointments can also be made by emailing, calling or texting.

Sue Gayne, Fresh Start’s director, said she expects volunteers to be busy, catching up to demand that has built up, both from donors and people in need of the things they provide, since the organization was notified at the end of 2024 that it would need to find a new home.

“It has been a long winter,” Gayne said while giving a tour of the facility recently. “There is going to be pent up demand for sure. There will be a lot of people looking for stuff, and a lot of people donating. The way things are now, it’s more important than ever that we serve the community.”

Gayne, who also helped create United Community Living Center, said once the center is fully operating it will have a volunteer program on Saturdays when its clients can help out at Project Fresh Start.

And when clients of the community living center secure housing, they’ll be able to set their new home up with free furnishings from Project Fresh Start.

St. Hilaire said for now the community living center is opening on Sundays to provide lunch and plans to expand that to being open all day on Sundays within the next couple of weeks. Its goal is to be open Friday to Sunday by the time the Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Center, which provides places for people who are homeless to spend the night during the coldest months of the year, closes for the season April 30.

United Community Living Center plans to host a public open house from 10 a.m. to 2  p.m., April 26 at the Spruce Street site on the east side of the Kennebec River, with a “Stuff the Tent” event to collect donations of items people who are homeless will need to survive outside, including tents, blankets, propane, hygiene items, lanterns, first aid kits, toilet paper, food and other items.

Project Fresh Start previously operated out of donated space in an NRF Distributors warehouse off Civic Center Drive, offered to them since 2017 by NRF President Norman Pomerleau. They had to leave in December because the space was being leased out to a new business.

For the first time, Project Fresh Start is paying rent for its space, although Gayne said they’re getting a good deal on the space from the community living center.

To help provide a revenue stream to cover rent, some items donated to Project Fresh Start may be resold in a planned online store, instead of donated like their other items. Gayne said it could be more beneficial to sell a valuable item and use the funds that generates to help people in need, rather than simply to pass that particular item on to one person in need.

The new space is about the same 3,000 square feet as their old site but is divided into several small rooms, so larger items, such as couches and beds, will continue to be kept and collected offsite in storage and can be brought to clients if they need such items.