United States and Canada
In the United States, major national thrift shop operators include Arc Thrift Stores, Goodwill Industries, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Stores, ReStore (see Habitat for Humanity International), Deseret Industries (in the western U.S.), and Value Village (see Savers). Regional operators include Deseret Industries in the western United States, and those run by the Bethesda Lutheran Home in the Upper Midwest. Many local charitable organizations, both religious and secular, operate thrift shops. Common among these are missions, children's homes, homeless shelters, and animal shelters. In addition, some charity shops are operated by churches, and are fundraising venues that support activities including, in some cases, missionary activities in other countries. Several U.S. stores are for-profit, with the charity that collected the goods making money from the wholesale of those items to the store.
In July 2009, a U.S. government report revealed that several lenders were judging their customers' financial status based on where they shopped, and were assuming that those who shopped at thrift stores and other low-cost retailers were struggling financially. In response, the lender were increasing interest rates, lowering their credit limit, or even damaging their overall credit score, which may have caused other credit issuers to further harm the shopper by taking similar actions (universal default), or denying credit applications altogether. Laws were passed by Congress in 2009 to stop issuers from these practices.
Read more about this topic: Charity Shop
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or canada:
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)