Bureaux du Coeur expands French office space to shelter homeless people

The nonprofit Bureaux du Coeur, founded in 2019 by Pierre‑Yves Loaëc, converts unused office space into temporary overnight accommodation for people experiencing homelessness. The initiative, developed with the Nantes chapter of the Centre des Jeunes Dirigeants, now partners with about 400 companies across 40 French cities and has extended to Lisbon, Barcelona and Brussels. Since its launch it has helped more than 1,000 individuals and provided roughly 160,000 nights of shelter. Participants must be adults without children or pets, legally resident in France, and free of alcohol, drug use or severe health issues, and they receive support to reintegrate into employment. Loaëc hopes the model will spread across Europe as cities confront rising homelessness and a surplus of vacant office space caused by remote‑work trends.