https://reasonstobecheerful.world/offices-homeless-accommodation/
"For several years, when Pierre-Yves Loaëc left his office in Nantes in the
evenings, he passed a woman sleeping rough in the parking lot near Nobilito,
the marketing agency he runs. The contrast nagged at him. Outside, she huddled
near a parking garage vent for warmth during the winter. “My office had heat, a
kitchen, sofas, a shower, toilets, but was sitting empty all night,” he
recalls. Yet he never spoke to her, unsure how he could help.
Instead, Loaëc became interested in a broader question: Why were so many
offices sitting empty every night while thousands of people lacked a safe place
to sleep? The answer became Bureaux du Coeur (“Offices of the Heart”), a
nonprofit that turns unused office space into temporary overnight accommodation
for people experiencing homelessness.
Today, the initiative works with 400 companies in 40 cities across France, and
beyond, in Lisbon, Barcelona and Brussels. Since its founding in 2019, Bureaux
du Coeur has helped more than 1,000 people and provided roughly 160,000 nights
of shelter. Its ambition is even larger: to expand across Europe as cities
grapple with two parallel crises — a persistent rise in homelessness and a glut
of underused office space following the shift to remote and hybrid work.
Bureaux de Coeur’s solution remains remarkably simple: When employees go home,
offices become homes."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
