A Houston, Texas, furniture store owner is letting displaced families and emergency responders sleep on the display beds in his stores.
Jim McIngvale, who is known as “Mattress Mack,” opened his two Gallery Furniture stores in Houston to anyone needing shelter from the record flooding caused by hurricane Harvey over the weekend, one of many examples of local businesses helping needy residents.
“We sell home theater furniture that you watch TV in, they’re sleeping on that. They’re sleeping on recliners, sleeping on sofas and love seats. We have sleeper sofas, they pulled them out and slept on that,” McIngvale told National Public Radio’s Morning Edition Wednesday.
“Think a slumber party on steroids,” McIngvale told NPR.
McIngvale announced that his stores were open to those who needed help last Sunday, and even organized delivery trucks to drive through flooded streets and rescue stranded Houstonians.
“We welcome you if you need a place to stay,” McIngvale said in a Facebook video. “All day on Sunday we went around rescuing people out of high water stranded on overpasses. We brought about 200 people into the store that way,” McIngvale told CNN.
McIngvale’s store also played host to about 60 National Guard troops who responded to the disaster in Houston.
“[The troops] are sleeping on the best Tempur-Pedic mattresses that are on the market,” Dave Marchione, an employee at the store, told CNN. “And I’ll tell you what — those are some happy soldiers.”
Naturally, the families staying at the store are grateful to McIngvale, who has done this kind of thing before. In 2005, he opened his stores to people fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
“I was raised as a Catholic. I continued my Catholic faith throughout my life, trying to do the right thing and hopefully, you do the right thing and help people along the way,” McIngvale told local TV station KENS5.
“Sitting in a perfectly normal house one day and then, 10 minutes later you’ve got three feet of water in it. So, it’s very stressful and we’re trying to help them out because they’ve done so much for us over the years,” McIngvale said.
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