Finding A Bed Tonight
No more midnight phone calls.
A family in crisis needs an emergency shelter bed. Right now, outreach workers
make phone calls — to shelters that may be full, closed, or unable to serve
that family. We built a free platform that shows real-time availability so
workers can search, hold a bed, and get the family there safely.
For Outreach Workers
- Search available beds by population type on your phone — see what's open right now
- Hold a bed in three taps while you transport the client (default 90 minutes, configurable)
- Works offline — your search results stay available if you lose signal
For Shelter Coordinators
- Update bed count in about 30 seconds — three taps from the coordinator dashboard
- See active holds so you know who's coming and when
- Partial participation — you can start with bed counts only, no reservations required
For DV Shelters
- Zero client information stored — no names, no addresses, no identifying data, ever
- Shelter address never displayed — shared verbally during a phone call only
- All referral data permanently deleted within 24 hours
For Reentry Navigators (v0.55+)
- Find transitional shelters that accept clients with felony histories — search by criminal-record policy and program-specific eligibility
- Place a hold for a future release using the same 3-tap flow; optional client name and date of birth are encrypted at rest and erased no later than 25 hours after the hold ends (CoC opt-in via
reentryMode tenant flag)
- See per-shelter eligibility criteria so you can match a client to the right placement before the call
See the reentry walkthrough for the operator-facing flow.
What It Costs
The software is free and open-source (Apache 2.0 license).
Hosting costs depend on your community's size: $15–30/month
for a small community (PostgreSQL only), $30–75 for mid-size, $100+ for metro areas.
Your CoC or city typically covers hosting.
Where We Are
The platform is built, tested, and live as a demonstration deployment at
findabed.org with fictional seed data —
but not yet adopted by any CoC community for production use. We're looking for a first
CoC partner to pilot with. What's still in progress: email-based "forgot password"
recovery (admins reset credentials manually today) and a third-party accessibility
audit. We name our gaps because trust matters more than polish.
How to Get Started
Contact us to set up a pilot conversation. We'll walk through the platform,
answer your questions, and discuss what onboarding looks like for your
community. The typical process is 7 days from first conversation to first
coordinator update.