About The Friendship House
More than a service. A room where you're expected.
The Friendship House is a community of Americans building lives in France — practising the language on each other, trading advice about work, and making the residency process far less frightening along the way. Not a sterile consultancy, not a passing social club — a place that intends to still be here for you in ten years.
The origin story
Founded in Château-Thierry, by people who needed it first.
In 2023, Adam T. Anderson kept meeting Americans who were quietly packing up and going home. Not because they had stopped loving France — most of them still did — but because they had spent two years understanding half of every conversation, watching their working life stall while their French caught up, and eating dinner with nobody but their own family. The residency file was rarely the last straw; the silence around it was. From Château-Thierry, Adam started building the room he wished his family had walked into: somewhere with honest answers, a kettle on, and people a few steps further along the same path.
Theory of change
Residency is half of it. Learning to live here is the other half.
A card in your wallet doesn't teach you how to speak to the pharmacist, how a French CV is supposed to read, or how to turn a neighbour into a friend. Those are learned slowly, in company, by getting it wrong in front of people who don't mind. So we do both halves at once: clear expectations drawn from what members have actually lived through take the fear out of the waiting, and a real room full of people takes the isolation out of the years around it. That combination is what turns enduring your first years in France into building a life here — routines, a favourite bakery, colleagues, someone to call.
How we work
Honest, careful, and rooted in the community.
We operate within the France Social Services and France Office Administrative Services framework, and we're respectful of French civic norms in everything we do. We're not a law firm, a language school, or a recruiter, and we never pretend to be. What we offer is real, member-contributed knowledge — about how prefectures behave, how interviews go, how people here found their footing at work and in the language — shared openly so the next person has an easier time than the last. When something is outside what we can help with, we say so plainly and point you somewhere better.
Our commitment
Who we're for.
We're for Americans who want France to be home — whether you arrived last month or five years ago, whether your French is fluent or four words long, whether your career is thriving or on hold. We won't market to you with fear, and we won't treat your residency as a transaction to close. We will tell you the truth, celebrate every small win with you — a phone call you got through, an interview that went well — and keep a seat warm on the discouraging days. Come with your questions, however basic they feel. Someone here has asked them already.
Team / Founders
Meet our Founder.
Adam T. Anderson leads The Friendship House with a background in data and, more importantly, a genuine love of having people over. His own family's first years in Château-Thierry — the confusion, the kindness of neighbours, the eventual sense of belonging — are the blueprint for how we support members. Adam works alongside local French residents and administrative experts who believe the same thing he does: that people do better when somebody is glad they came.