The Council to Homeless Persons is using dating app Happn to showcase just how close you can be to hidden homelessness.
The campaign, a pro-bono effect from Melbourne agency By All Means, launched during Homelessness Week and uses geo-locaton technology to introduce users of the app in Melbourne to profiles of individuals familiar with hidden homelessness.
The profiles appear within Happn whenever a user passes by a location where these spokespeople once experienced homelessness including rooming houses, motels, or sites where they slept in vans or cars across the city.
Council to Homeless Persons CEO Jenny Smith says: “Homelessness is much more than rough sleeping. We catch the tram with people experiencing homelessness, and we wait in line at the supermarket together, yet we probably wouldn’t even know it. Homelessness Happns is a campaign that shows that homelessness can happen to anyone at any time regardless of their age, or employment status."
The campaign calls on the Federal Government to extend national homelessness funding set to soon expire.
By All Means co-creative director Toby Cummings says: "Homelessness is a topical issue, and has been for some time – the problem, of course, is that people tend to switch off, so it’s important to keep finding new ways to talk about the problem. We’re thrilled that our thinking has been of some service for continuing the conversation. The novel use of the dating app platform has allowed us to push the conversation into mainstream media otherwise unreceptive to another story about homelessness."
