Chilliwack – Goods at the Hoods’ Vintage & Antiques is all about community! Their customers are greeted with a warm smile! Their enthusiasm is infectious! Donations are cheerfully accepted during store hours! If you think this store is familiar with an old name, you’re right. It was Street Hope and now things have evolved. You can still find John, Bev and Graham Hood on Young by the railway crossing.
Their Facebook page can be found here.
ORIGINAL POSTING – John Hood went back to school in 2010 to become an addictions worker. He graduated with honors and was approached to ‘take over’ a local recovery home for men with addictions in Chilliwack, BC. John reformulated the approach to recovery and proceeded to revamp the house itself as well as the rules and regulations. In a year and a half, the group of men went from 1 person working part time, to 4 working full-time jobs and 1 person going back to school! As there was no government funding, when a resident slipped up and had to leave for the safety of the other residents, rent and utilities still had to be paid. We lived in a tiny 560 sq ft suite attached to the 3-storey rented recovery house. With a passion for yard sales, we brainstormed about approaching those holding garage sales to ask if we might have their ‘leftovers’. On one given Sunday we made 7 trips with our Ford Focus! The idea was met with positive results and soon we were holding our very own yard sales in an attempt to catch up on bills.
This concept worked so well, that in no time bills were almost all caught up and the recovery home flourished! As word got around within the community, donations poured in to the extent that a retail outlet was becoming an urgent necessity. Thus was born StreetHope New & Used. Given the time frame, we opted to open as a for-profit, seeing as it could take anywhere from 9 months to 2 years to get a non-profit status, and time was of essence!
Within 2 years the owner of the rented recovery house, who lived out of province, wanted to sell and the buyer, who himself has been in recovery for 20+ years, opted to allow the house and its residents to continue as such.
