The grassroots movement of Americans opening their homes to those misplaced by Gulf Coast hurricanes last year was an unprecedented outpouring of generosity and support for those in time of great need.

It wasn't, however, the first time home owners in large numbers have opened their homes to perfect strangers.

Tens of thousands of Americans and others around the world often shelter travelers -- at no charge -- thanks to a cottage industry of match makers who put travelers together with hosts offering the freebies.

With some elements of house swapping, hostel living and housing exchange students, the cost-free, in-home accommodations movement has gotten an information technology boost from at least three websites available to help you find a roof over your head when you are away -- at no charge.

Accommodations on the house aren't for everyone.

• Your stay can be anything from sacking out on a mattress on the floor to kicking back in a fully-furnished home.

• At least one site requires you to also serve as a host as well as a guest. Others allow you to be one or the other.

• Each website represents a large, but tight-knit group of like-minded travelers and they come with privacy policies and terms of use contracts you must agree to. Otherwise they Web-based services aren't policed or regulated by an agency or group where you could file complaints.

• Typically, the sites work with legal entities to negate their potential liabilities. You, on the other hand, enter another's home or allow guests into yours at your own risk.

The services operate in a big, cloudy gray area when it comes to landlord and tenant, fair housing or related laws and regulations.

That risk is offset only by levels of trust generated by different means on each site.

Couch Surfing was created a little more than a year ago so frugal founder Casey Fenton, 27, of Conway, NH could afford to see the world and but not like your typical tourist.

Boasting more than 51,000 members from some 180 countries, about half of whom actually offer accommodations, Couch Surfing requires registration online and recommends optional "verification" and "vouching."

Verification is a check, via a $25 credit card payment, only that your name and address are accurate. "Vouching" is a sort of six-degrees-of-separation confirmation of your trustworthiness.

A vouch is granted only by those who've already received a vouch. That means those vouched for are somehow connected to the original core of people for whom the founder originally vouched.

You can get a vouch by "surfing" or staying with someone who can vouch so they can get to know and trust you. Once you get a vouch you can then vouch for others, and so on.

Once you are registered -- verified and vouched or not -- you can search for housing and poke around the site for interest groups, chat groups, destination meetings and related features.

Global Freeloaders was founded by self-described "travel bug" Adam Staines, as a 24-year-old from Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 2000, the site has more than 28,000 members from some 190 countries who must serve as both hosts and travel as guests.

Anyone who registers to seek free travel housing, also has to be prepared to serve as a host within six months of registering and perform the task on a tit-for-tat basis -- get free accommodations six times, host six times. It's not clear how the service enforces a voluntary two-way host-guest policy. The website clearly explains, as a host, it's up to you who you allow in your home.

Once you are ready to travel, introduce yourself to hosts online. If you receive a reply, you can start a dialogue about your accommodation needs and travel plans.

Hospitality Club has been available since 2002 and founded by Veit Kuehne, 26, of Dresden, Germany and his siblings. It now boasts 70,000 members in some 200 countries.

Once Hospitality Club verifies your membership you can contact other members or invite one of the club's dozen or so "ambassadors," club promoters imbued with wanderlust, who try to visit as many members as possible.

The website also offers chat rooms, testimonials and little more, other than the connection to those offering accommodations. Along with a privacy policy, rules are limited to not spamming members, respecting others and showing your passport and giving its number when visiting as a guest or requesting accommodations.

Couch Surfing has the best look and feel of the three sites. It also offers more free-accommodation peripheral services than the others. While Couch Surfing won't win awards for website design, the other two are much more tedious and boring, visually.

What they all lack in look-and-feel, however, is more than made up for in what they offer -- quick, efficient databases providing access to literally hundreds of thousands of people worldwide offering free housing when you travel.

Given the savings that come with the gift of travel accommodations, the wrapping is incidental on these Web sites.

Bookmark them.

You never know when you'll need a place to stay.

"Site To See" reviews are occasional but timely critiques of real estate-related websites deemed unique, consumer-friendly, informative and easy to use.

Published: February 15, 2006

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.