If you live in Queens, there is a good chance you have walked past a Queens Community House (QCH) site without realizing what it is. The organization runs more than 30 program sites across the borough, tucked into NYCHA developments, schools, senior centers, and standalone community buildings from Forest Hills to Jackson Heights to Kew Gardens Hills. It is one of those organizations that operates at scale, but locally — and that is exactly what makes it work.
This Sunday’s borough beat is a profile of QCH because, more than almost any other Queens institution, it is the kind of organization that quietly stitches the borough together. CEO Ben Thomases has led the agency through a long stretch of growth and renovation, including a $16 million overhaul of the Forest Hills Community Center completed in 2024 and a $5 million state grant announced for upgrades to the Pomonok Community Center late last year.
What QCH Actually Does
The agency’s portfolio is wide. On any given week, Queens Community House programs touch:
- Early childhood education and after-school programs in school-based and standalone sites.
- Older adult centers serving thousands of seniors with hot meals, social programs, and case management.
- Youth development programs, including college access and workforce readiness.
- Housing services, including support for families at risk of homelessness and tenants navigating their leases.
- Immigrant and refugee programs, with multilingual case workers across some of the most linguistically diverse neighborhoods in the United States.
The Forest Hills Community Center on 108th Street is the agency’s flagship and a useful place to see the work in person — it includes program rooms, a teen center, and a senior space, all on one property.
Why It’s a Sunday Story
Sunday is when a lot of QCH’s behind-the-scenes work shows up most visibly. Senior centers wind down their week. Immigrant families who work weekday shifts use weekends to access ESOL classes and immigration support. Volunteers cycle through food distribution and pantry shifts. The borough’s diversity, which can feel theoretical when you read about it, becomes very real when you watch a single QCH lobby fill with neighbors who collectively speak ten languages.
For a borough where roughly half of residents were born outside the United States, having an anchor agency that can deliver services in many languages, across many neighborhoods, is not a nice-to-have. It is what allows daily life in Queens to function for hundreds of thousands of people.
How To Get Involved
Queens Community House publishes its programs and volunteer needs at qchnyc.org. Volunteer opportunities range from tutoring and mentoring to one-off events and food distribution. Donations of new school supplies, hygiene products, and gift cards for grocery stores are particularly useful and tend to be needed year-round, not just at the holidays.
If your skill set leans professional — accounting, HR, marketing, technology — agencies like QCH often welcome pro bono support, which is harder to recruit than general volunteers and can have a disproportionate impact on operations.
Other Queens Names Worth Knowing
QCH is the headline, but it is part of a larger Queens civic ecosystem worth getting familiar with: the Queens Chamber of Commerce, which has expanded business support and small-business technical assistance; the Queens Economic Development Corporation, which runs entrepreneurship programs at queensny.org; and a growing slate of neighborhood-specific groups along corridors like Liberty Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue, and Northern Boulevard. Together they form the connective tissue that keeps Queens functioning at street level.
What You Need to Know
- Queens Community House runs more than 30 sites across the borough, headquartered at the Forest Hills Community Center.
- The Forest Hills Community Center completed a $16 million renovation in 2024; a $5 million state grant was announced for the Pomonok Community Center.
- Programs span early childhood, older adults, youth, housing, and immigrant services — often in multiple languages.
- Volunteer signups, donation needs, and program details are at qchnyc.org.
- Pro bono professional support (legal, accounting, HR, tech) is often more impactful than financial donations alone.
For more on what’s happening in your neighborhood, see our Queens neighborhood coverage, or take a Sunday walk using one of our Queens walking guides.
