Empty offices at night became 160,000 nights of shelter

A French nonprofit called Bureaux du Coeur, or Offices of the Heart, has turned empty workplaces into overnight shelter for more than 1,000 people since 2019, providing roughly 160,000 nights of safety. The idea came to Pierre-Yves Loaec, who runs a Nantes marketing agency and kept passing a woman sleeping near a parking garage vent for warmth. "My office had heat, a kitchen, sofas, a shower, toilets, but was sitting empty all night," he recalls. The model is simple. When employees go home, one guest arrives carrying a key, and a partner organization handles support. Companies now host across 40 French cities and beyond, in Lisbon and Brussels. Guests are not expected to clear out before staff arrive. Loaec hopes they share a coffee instead. One employee at a hosting firm put it plainly: "Who had coffee with him over the last two years?" An impact study found 85 to 90 percent leave with both housing and a job.