Our story
About Community Hosting
From a spare-room matching pilot born in regional Australia, to a worldwide guide that helps people find the organisations already changing lives.
From a spare-room matching pilot born in regional Australia, to a worldwide guide that helps people find the organisations already changing lives.
Australia has over a hundred thousand people without a safe home — and well over a million empty rooms. What if we could connect the two?
That question drove the original Community Hosting program, launched in 2018 by John Stericker and Jayen Ashar via flatmate.com, an Australian share-accommodation service running since 1998. The model was careful and human: a host would offer a spare room, listed anonymously; a welfare agency would refer and vouch for a guest and stay involved as a support and reference; and all three would sign a clear hosting agreement, with safety, eligibility and insurance checked first.
The idea struck a chord. It was featured on the ABC's triple j Hack program ("Could an Airbnb for vacant properties help our homelessness problem?"), and drew support from partners including StreetSmart Australia, the Big Ideas Homelessness Network and lawyers Sparke Helmore. A pilot took shape in the Bellingen Shire of New South Wales via the Housing Matters action group.
Running a single matching platform is hard, and — happily — many brilliant organisations around the world already do it: Nightstop in the UK, Host Homes across the US, refugee hosting networks in Britain, France and Canada, Homeshare in dozens of countries, alongside thousands of shelters, outreach teams and domestic-violence services. You'll find them all in the directory.
So Community Hosting is being reimagined for what's most needed now: awareness. Rather than competing with the people doing this work, this site points to them — a clean, independent, worldwide directory backed by news, spotlights and data, so anyone in need, any would-be host, and any supporter can find help fast.
People in housing need are never a problem to be managed — they're neighbours deserving of respect and a fair go.
No ads, no paywalls, no favouritism. We point to the best help wherever it exists.
We verify listings, cite our sources, and are upfront about what we don't know.
This is a community resource, and it gets better with every addition. If you run or know an organisation, shelter, outreach service or hosting program that helps people find housing — anywhere in the world — we'd love to list it.
You can also flag anything out of date: a changed phone number, a closed service, a new program. To suggest a listing, share the organisation's name, country, category, official website and a one-line description.