Turn the place you live into a place you belong.
Family In My Backyard (FIMBY) is a shared space for the people in your neighbourhood: to ask for help, offer what you have, and stay connected in small everyday ways. Not a city-wide feed. Just the people around you.
Live now in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Strathcona, and parts of Chinatown (postal code V6A). Elsewhere? Sign up with your postal code and we’ll let you know when FIMBY arrives.
Free to you. No ads. No data sales.
A non-profit endeavour.
Bring FIMBY to your neighbourhood →
Good morning, neighbour
THANK YOU
BULK BUY
LIBRARY ITEM
Home
Library
Messages
My Stuff
Example posts:
what a week on FIMBY can look like.
You can wave at the same person for ten years
and never learn their name.
Designed to stay local
FIMBY keeps things close to home. You’ll see the same neighbours, not thousands of strangers, so names become familiar and small acts of care build real relationships.
And unlike apps built to buy, sell, or give away, FIMBY is built to foster relationships. You loan a neighbour your drill, it comes back, and so does the conversation: a face you’ll see again, not a stranger across town.
What if where you live felt a little more like family?
Not sentimental. Just people who know your name, notice when you’re carrying too much, and leave room at the table.
Here’s what that looks like
Small, everyday ways to ask, offer, and stay connected with people close enough to actually show up.
Ask & Offer
Need a hand moving a couch? Got extra tomato starts? Splitting a Costco run? Ask, or offer. Both are normal here.
Lend & Borrow
Tools, kitchen gear, and books from people on your block, all in the Library.
Borrow a Skill
The Library holds skills too: a neighbour who fixes bikes, tutors, translates, or lends a hand.
Gather
Backyard dinners, block parties, and standing rhythms like a weekly movie night or monthly soup night you can count on.
Shared Life
Thank-yous, stories, prayer if that’s your thing. Never required.
Local orgs
Community groups, centres, and churches post meals, rides, and check-ins: steady tables neighbours can count on, right in the feed.
Receiving help isn’t failure. It’s where trust starts.
Nobody stopped caring.
The world just made caring the hard thing.
Bumping into your neighbours used to happen whether you meant it to or not. Kids played on the block after school. The video store, the bank line, the post office: every errand got you out of the house, with a good chance you’d end up chatting with a neighbour along the way. Those things went one at a time, each for a decent reason, and nothing took their place. So knowing the people around you became something you have to do on purpose, and on purpose loses to a long day, every time. We’re not asking anyone to try harder. We’re making it easy to cross paths again.
Rooted in real relationship
A trellis doesn’t make the vine grow. It just gives it something to hold onto. FIMBY works the same way: it won’t manufacture community, but it makes the small things easier: knowing who’s nearby, asking without the awkwardness, lending without losing track of it. The care that’s already there gets somewhere to climb.
Ask & Offer
Gathering
Thank You
The feed is only the beginning.
FIMBY isn’t really about software. It’s about refusing something we’ve quietly accepted: that people can live a few doors apart for years and still remain strangers.
A borrowed pot becomes a conversation. A shared meal becomes a check-in. A thank-you becomes a story the neighbourhood remembers. The one who lent the ladder in June is the one asking for a ride in November. Nobody stays the helper. Nobody stays the helped.
There’s an old name for this: mutual aid. Not charity flowing one direction, just neighbours trading places, season after season.
Neighbours have relied on that kind of give-and-take for a very long time. What we’re after isn’t a bigger network, but a neighbourhood that feels a little more like family.
Check your neighbourhood →
This started long before the app
Neighbouring is not our invention. People have been doing it for as long as there have been neighbours, and on these blocks long before us. FIMBY is just our attempt to keep an old practice alive in a new time.
Our part of the story is twenty-plus years in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, on blocks that carry more than their share: block parties, shared meals, borrowed ladders, and showing up when someone was carrying too much. For us that practice is rooted in Christian tradition, and it stays open to everyone. The app is newer than that. What stayed the same is the radius: a block, a building, a few streets, where you see the same faces again and small acts of care can turn into real trust.
It’s not a crisis line, or a substitute for shelters, detox, or health care. It’s the everyday kind of neighbouring that sits alongside those supports, never in their place.
This isn’t theory. During our initial pilot, one neighbour asked for book recommendations and ended up inside another’s home for the first time, after living a block apart for nine years.
No one gets left out
You don’t have to be online to belong here. Someone you trust, a neighbour, a family member, or a church volunteer, can take part on your behalf: posting, responding, and messaging as you. Built for elders, people with low tech confidence, or anyone who’d rather have someone close help them join in.
Parents can do the same for a kid in their household: a parent-managed family profile, so a child can be known by name in the neighbourhood while a parent is always the one at the keyboard.
And you decide how neighbours can show up for you. Help is welcomed, never assumed.
You also don’t need much to take part:
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No phone or home internet? FIMBY works in any browser, including the computer at your local library. -
No fixed address? Nothing is ever mailed to you. Any postal code inside your neighbourhood works: a shelter, an SRO, or another local spot you’re connected to. -
English not your first language? Sign in through a browser and its built-in translation shows the whole app in your language.
New here? See how FIMBY works.
Turn on the porch light?
If this neighbourhood is part of your real life, you’re welcome here.
Check your neighbourhood
with your postal code
activates your account
happening nearby
FIMBY not in your neighbourhood yet? Sign up anyway. We’ll add you to the waitlist and let you know when FIMBY launches near you.
Part of a community group or organization? You can join too. Just tick the box when you sign up.
For adults 19+. Families welcome: parents add a family profile from their own login. More in the FAQ.
Bring FIMBY here
FIMBY grows one neighbourhood at a time. If you’re a neighbour, organizer, church, or community group who’d help launch a hub, we’d love to hear from you.
- Gather 10–20 neighbours you can actually recognize
- Host a low-key intro: coffee, porch, or community room
- Optional moderator role with support from the FIMBY team
A few practical things, before you go
Will this just be another dead app?
FIMBY is neighbourhood-sized on purpose: the same faces, again and again, not a city-wide feed chasing engagement.
Read the full answer →Who can see my information?
Only your neighbourhood, never the whole city. Your contact details are never shared automatically; you choose what to share, with whom, and can take it back anytime.
Read the full answer →Do I need to be Christian?
No. FIMBY is open to all neighbours. Christian roots, inclusive welcome.
Read the full answer →Is FIMBY safe for LGBTQ+ people?
Yes, explicitly welcome, with community standards that protect dignity.
Read the full answer →Isn’t lending my stuff risky?
A little. Trusting people always is. But it isn’t blind: before anyone can borrow an item, a neighbour who already knows them vouches for them. It’s the one thing on FIMBY that waits: everything else is open from day one.
Read the full answer →Is it free?
Yes, free to you. No ads, no premium tiers, no data sales. FIMBY is a non-profit endeavour built to serve the people who use it, sustained by donations and community contributions.
Read the full answer →