Since 1985, Habitat for Humanity of Forsyth County has built more than 400 affordable, energy efficient homes and served nearly a thousand local families, and the ReStore at 819 South Main Street, Suite B, in Kernersville is one of the retail engines that keeps that work funded. The organization points to a stark local reality driving its mission: roughly one in three families in the area struggles with housing costs that eat into the budget needed for food, healthcare, and other basics, and every sale at the Kernersville ReStore helps chip away at that problem by funding new construction, home repairs, and preservation of existing affordable housing.
The Kernersville store is one of three ReStores under the Habitat Forsyth umbrella, joining sister locations on Coliseum Drive and Peters Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. While the Winston-Salem stores open Monday through Saturday, the Kernersville location runs Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sundays and Mondays, a schedule worth noting for anyone planning a first visit. Suite B places the store within a South Main Street retail stretch in downtown Kernersville, an easy stop for residents of the town as well as shoppers coming from the eastern edge of Forsyth County or nearby Guilford County.
On the sales floor, shoppers find building materials, furniture, appliances, and general home goods, all donated by area homeowners, contractors, and businesses rather than purchased wholesale, which is what keeps prices consistently below retail. Because inventory depends entirely on what comes through the donation dock, the specific mix of cabinets, doors, flooring, and furniture available changes from week to week, rewarding shoppers who check in regularly rather than expecting to find the same item twice.
Habitat Forsyth structures its broader assistance around household income, serving families earning between 45 and 80 percent of the area median income, and the organization does more than build new houses. It also works to preserve existing affordable homes in the community and advocates for housing policy changes at the local level, treating the ReStore’s retail sales as one piece of a larger strategy rather than an end in itself. That mission runs on more than store revenue alone. Habitat Forsyth relies on volunteers, individual donors, faith communities, and corporate partners to sustain both its ReStores and its construction programs, and the Kernersville store’s day to day operations reflect that same volunteer-driven model, with community members helping receive donations, price merchandise, and staff the sales floor alongside paid team members.
For anyone furnishing a home in Kernersville or looking for discounted building materials for a renovation, the ReStore on South Main Street offers a dependable, if ever-changing, selection at prices well under standard retail. But the real distinction of shopping here is what happens to the money afterward: rather than going to a private retailer’s bottom line, every purchase supports Habitat for Humanity of Forsyth County’s decades-long effort to build and preserve affordable housing in the Winston-Salem and Kernersville area. The Kernersville ReStore is Habitat Forsyth’s Tuesday through Saturday secondhand home goods outlet, where furniture and building material sales directly fund the construction of affordable homes for local families.
