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Homies

A group of friends alongside someone starting over

Homies connects a group of friends to someone who is or was without a home. What they share is time, attention and friendship, about an hour a week per person. Homies recently became a programme of Room for Change.

How it works

Three steps, and the rest is friendship

  1. 01

    You form a group

    Friends, family or colleagues who want to mean something together. Experience in social work is not needed; you come as yourself.

  2. 02

    We make the match

    Room for Change introduces the group to someone who is or was without a home and who is open to this kind of contact.

  3. 03

    You share your time

    Spread across the group it comes down to roughly an hour a week each. Coffee, a walk, help with a form, or simply being there.

The Room for Change campaign wall: rows of portraits under the line “Some of them are homeless. Can you tell who?”
Where it began

A conversation on a bench, and a group of friends who stayed

Homies started in 2020 with a photographer who got talking to a man living on the street. He called in his own circle of friends, and eleven days later they had shelter, food and money arranged together.

What lasted was the part that came after. The group kept showing up: for a coffee, for a birthday, for the appointments nobody wants to go to alone. That is the whole idea behind Homies, and it is what every group does today.

Why friendship counts

A key in your hand is not the same as people around you

Years on the street or in shelters cost people the network the rest of us take for granted. Housing alone does not give that back: you can be lonely behind your own front door. A group of friends fills exactly that gap, and does it without a referral, a waiting list or a closing date.

An hour a week per person, spread across the whole group
No end date a group stays for as long as it clicks
Together the group carries it, so nobody stands alone
Two programmes

A room, and a circle of people around it

Room for Change runs two programmes that strengthen each other. The hotel programme gives someone a room and the calm to recover. Homies gives someone people who stay, during that time and long after it.

The programme

Hotels open rooms to people who are temporarily without a home, and care partners guide them towards durable housing.

How the hotel programme works

Homies

A group of friends walks alongside someone who is or was without a home, for as long as it clicks.

You are reading this page
Where we stand

Ten groups, and this is only the start

Ten groups of friends have formed so far
Ten Homies gained a group of friends around them
A hundred Homies: what we are working towards together
Homies

Want to form a group?

Tell us who you have in mind and we will look at what fits, at your pace.

Tell us about your group All the ways to get involved