It’s a long way from Aleppo to Epsom, but Ahmad, a 26-year-old Syrian Kurd, seems remarkably at home in suburban Surrey, dipping in and out of his hosts’ middle-class, British lifestyle. “I’m totally independent,” he explained. “I’ve got my own room upstairs, but I also join them, we go out together to dinner or concerts."Ahmad arrived in the UK last summer. At about the same time, his hosts Nina and Timothy set up Refugees at Home , an organisation that places asylum seekers and refugees with British families, couples, or individuals who have space to host them for anything from a few days to several months. Ahmad is the second person Nina and Timothy have taken in themselves.A lack of existing networks and an escalation in the refugee crisis spurred the couple to set up their own organisation last August. “We had our son and his girlfriend living with us until Spring, and then they left,” Timothy explained. “We didn’t want to move, but equally it was difficult to justify having this five bedroom house with just the two of us rattling around in it, so I suggested that we ought to look into taking in refugees.”There are points in the asylum process at which migrants can fall through cracks in the system and be left destitute — with nowhere to live, nothing to live off, and no entitlement to work in the UK. Ahmad’s asylum claim was approved a few months ago— he was granted refugee status and is allowed to stay in the UK — but this meant he stopped being entitled to the small allowance given to asylum seekers, and he was given notice of eviction from the temporary accommodation he had been placed in. All of this before his National Insurance number — which you need to get a job, or job seekers allowance — had come through. Anticipating being made homeless, Ahmad posted in a Facebook group asking if anyone could help him. Nina responded to the post.So far, Refugees at Home have placed six or seven other migrants with hosts, and Nina has a list of 300 people who have expressed interest in hosting in the future. Beyond Surrey, it seems there has been a nationwide boom in hosting since the refugee crisis peaked last summer. Several similar schemes have popped up in different parts of the country, and the few organisations that have existed for years — the Boaz Trust in Manchester for example — have experienced a spike in interest.