About Huts 4 Our Friends
“Huts 4 Our Friends” is a nonprofit organization dedicated to housing and rehabilitating people who are currently experiencing homelessness.
Drug and alcohol addiction counseling.
Mental health counseling.
Job training.
Educational resources.
Our Story
In 2020, Huts 4 Our Friends founder Caleb Houston had an opportunity to participate in a local initiative to help provide meals to some of Pensacola’s homeless population. While at this event, he was approached by an old friend with who he had lost contact, who asked him for help. At the time, Houston didn’t have the means to help but he vowed to change that.
Not long after this unexpected reunion, Caleb saw a post on Facebook from an organization that was making similar huts, and the idea for this organization was born,
Huts 4 Our Friends was created from the simple desire to help. We started with a GoFundMe that has since received over $9,000 in donations, and on February 6th we successfully hosted our first community hut building event.
These hut-building events occur every Saturday and are an incredible way for the Pensacola community to give back to its most vulnerable members.
Our Vision for the Future
These huts are just the first of many steps that we are taking in order to improve the lives of those experiencing homelessness in our community. Our current goal is to create a small village of fifty huts. We plan to be able to place the huts on a secured land to house individuals in our huts. This village will be complete with the resources that are often not available to our homeless population including:
-Drug and alcohol addiction counseling.
-Mental health counseling.
-Job training.
-Educational resources.
With these resources, we intend to create a community that has an exceptional rehabilitation turnover rate. We are striving to build the most effective program possible so that we can help the homeless members of our community to get back on their feet. This environment of healing and rehabilitation has been endorsed by many leaders in our community including Mayor Grover Robinson and Judge Thomas V. Dannheisser.
In developing this program we are also looking to eventually bring it to other cities and states. Homelessness, unfortunately, exists in every city in America and we are going to do our best to change that.
The purpose of Huts 4 Our Friends is simple, we saw a problem not being addressed in this community and we are doing our part to fix it. We live by the motto “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” So join us in helping to make a difference in this community. Join us in uplifting a population that has been downtrodden for too long. Join us in building this place of healing and rehabilitation. Join us to build a better world, for our friends.
“I want to create an atmosphere where people can really get down to the issues, get cleaned up and become productive members of society. Just having that little place of independence and being able to be there and know that it’s yours, that can really help them get the first step of the way.”