Situated between a Second Cup and a 77-year-old fruit market, 1591 Bayview Ave. in Toronto’s trendy Leaside neighbourhood seemed an improbable location for a homeless shelter.
So when a sign appeared on Friday Oct. 2 announcing that a former Sleep Country Canada mattress store would be transformed into the Jefferson Homeless Shelter on Nov. 30, area residents were perplexed.
The whole thing was actually part of a pro bono ad campaign by Leo Burnett Toronto for Raising the Roof, a non-profit organization working to end homelessness. A cut-out in the boarding housed a hidden camera that captured people’s reactions.
The announcement provided a toll-free number and email address that people could use to ask questions or voice concerns. And boy did they ever.
“It was very immediate,” said Caitlin Boros, marketing and communications coordinator for Raising the Roof in Toronto. “People were stopped by it right away.”
The feedback, she said, was a mix of positive and negative responses.
While a common assumption was that Leaside was selected because it is among Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods, Boros said it was actually one of five potential sites that met Raising the Roof’s basic criteria of featuring a vacant storefront and being situated in an area where homelessness isn’t as prevalent as it is in the downtown core.
The actual “reveal” was supposed to come two days later, but a local news outlet caught wind of the stunt, forcing the charity to come clean a day earlier than planned.
On Saturday, a second sign appeared on the boarding: “You told us you don’t want a shelter here. Neither do we. Support us in creating long-term solutions. Let’s end homelessness.” It directed people to RaisingTheRoof.org.
According to Boros, the stunt was meant to highlight the “NIMBYism” typically associated with charitable efforts of this nature, while also spotlighting the issue of homelessness in Canada in the days leading up to the Oct. 19 federal election.
“The more we can spread awareness of homelessness the better,” said Boros. “There’s been a lot of discussion at the municipal level about the need for affordable housing and a national housing strategy, but it really isn’t something that hasn’t been much in the spotlight during the election campaigns.
“In the week leading up to people making their decision, we wanted to make sure homelessness and housing is top of mind.”
Raising the Roof filmed the resident interaction with the sign, with the footage being cut into a video that will appear on the organization’s YouTube channel beginning on Monday. The video will also incorporate comments from the call-in line.
All of the residents’ faces will be blurred in the videos, as will the signs of local businesses. The goal is not to single out any one neighbourhood, said Boros, but demonstrate that this is a situation that could impact any community.
Boros said Raising the Roof has received some negative feedback regarding the surprise nature of the stunt, but said it was done in a way that would elicit a genuine response.
“We knew the only way to do that was to do something that people believed could be a possibility,” she said. “Some people gave us a lot of really great feedback, and they wished there was something like that coming to their community, and others were relieved that it wasn’t happening.”
M&K Media is handling media for the online portion of the campaign, which includes social media and pre-roll video.
