Charity matches young people at risk of sleeping rough with hosts who provide a bed for the night in a warm, secure home • Click here to donate to our appeal • Please help us tackle urgent problems of homelessness and destitution

When Helen Rathmill first met 18-year-old Stan he was in his rugby kit standing outside Tesco in the rain. She had gone to pick him up after getting a call earlier in the day from Nightstop, an emergency accommodation service in Greater Manchester run by the Depaul UK charity, asking if her spare room was free that evening.

The pair had never met before and yet they were about to spend the night under Helen’s roof. Helen knew little about him, other than he’d got no criminal record and had recently been kicked out of home by his step-mum. He’d been sofa surfing for the previous five months, flitting between jobs at music festivals and at Manchester United, but had run out of options and was facing his first night sleeping on the street.

Stan knew a little bit more about his host, having been shown Helen’s profile at Nightstop. It said she lived alone in Oldham, “in a little house near a park”, worked from home and hated spicy food. “My food won’t be anything fancy or intricate,” she had warned. “My friends often joke that I have a very bland palate. However, I am open to any dietary needs — just let me know.”

For the past year Helen, a 38-year-old housing benefits worker from Oldham, has been one of 600 people all over the UK offering up their guest room to a young person. She has hosted around 20 times so far, both young men and women, aged 16 to 24.

Helen hosts for a few nights most weeks, keeping Nightstop up to date as to when she can and can’t open her door. It is an evening-only service. All of her guests must be out of the house by 9am and can’t come back until teatime. If they miss her 10.30pm curfew, they’re out for the night.

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Stan arrived, soggy but cheerful and with an enormous gap-toothed smile, in September. He stayed for three nights while support workers at Depaul, a homelessness charity which operates Nightstop, found him a longer-term option.

He’d come straight from rugby practice the night she took him in, carrying a small rucksack containing his laptop and a change of clothes. Helen had stocked his room with Penguin biscuits, Square crisps and some cartons of juice, and left new socks, boxer shorts and pyjamas in a drawer by the bed.

Basic toiletries donated to Nightstop by members of the public were also on hand. She gave him the wifi password — “not all hosts do, but it’s like you’ve chopped off their left arm if you don’t” — and cooked him a non-spicy stir-fry while he had a shower.

More than 83,000 young people were identified as homeless last year. Around a quarter of these manage to find some kind of accommodation. But for those who don’t, Nightstop offers temporary sanctuary.

Helen became a host for what she says are “very selfish reasons”. “I’m not going to lie,” she says. “It makes me feel amazing. It makes me feel like I am really making a difference to somebody’s life.”

When she signed up for Nightstop, she was looking for an adventure. “I wasn’t married, I had no kids. I was bored. I was looking to do something different. I wanted to change something in my local community but didn’t just want to work in a charity shop. My auntie told me about it, she said, ‘there’s this thing where you take in a young person for the night, give ’em breakfast and then chuck ’em out.’”

It sounded perfect for Helen, who knew she didn’t want someone hanging around all day. She passed a criminal records check, did some training and, after her home passed a basic health and safety check, was ready to go.

She quickly learnt that her guests would not be the sort of homeless most people think of when they hear the term. “It’s not the stereotypical idea of someone sleeping on the street in a cardboard box,” said Dave Batchelor, who runs Nightstop Greater Manchester. “We are talking about the ‘hidden homeless’, young people in that grey area who don’t count on the official statistics but who are staying on sofas and moving from place to place. We aim to help them before they spend a night outside.”

Helen was reassured that no guests would have substance misuse problems, and she in turn pledged not to drink or take drugs in her house. She was told not to give her guests any money and advised that if she was ever uncomfortable with a guest, she could always refuse them. This has only happened twice: once because the prospective guest was already divorced with kids “and felt more like a man than a young person”, and once because a pregnant 17-year-old girl clearly did not want to be placed with a stranger at all.

She never leaves guests in the house alone and doesn’t give them a key. But beyond taking some basic precautions – “like not leaving a £20 note on the coffee table” – says she doesn’t worry about security. Her family were more concerned: “My brother was like: ‘Right, you need a lock on your bedroom door.’”

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Two months on, Stan is settled in supported accommodation in Oldham. He’s got an apprenticeship in fabrication and welding and hopes to pursue a career in engineering. He thanks Helen for welcoming him at his lowest ebb. “I was close to sleeping on the streets when she let me stay and I am very thankful for that.”

He insists that he will host too, once he has his own place and a spare room, and says that it’s not as scary as people might think.

“I would say they are only strangers for the first five minutes,” said Helen. “Don’t be worried about any preconceived ideas you might have about who homeless people are. It’s just a vulnerable young person who needs a bed for the night.”

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