Advocacy Communications Have a Clear Role in Finding Solutions to Homelessness

Before, During, and After this Global Health Crisis

By Lara Bergthold, Amber Hubert, and Leo Wallach

There is real political will and drive to house the homeless right now. One could even argue that if we can’t provide safe and stable housing for homeless populations — who are particularly at risk as many live without access to frequent hand-washing, face masks, or the ability to keep a safe distance from others — we’ll never be able to end the pandemic. RALLY’s advocacy partners are deeply engaging in this conversation when just a few months before the COVID-19 crisis, this felt like an undoable long-shot effort.

RALLY executed three different public awareness campaigns in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle — all launched to educate and engage the public about the causes of homelessness and the solutions to end it. And we are launching a new engagement in Oakland. These cities are taking action, mobilizing, and housing thousands of unhoused residents — if only temporarily.

In California, Project Roomkey was created to make 15,000 hotel and motel rooms available for people experiencing homelessness — either through buying or long-term leasing. A version of this is also happening in Seattle/King County. This collaborative mobilization effort provides some needed answers, but has also raised more questions: Can you find solutions to homelessness? Can you organize and house these unhoused people during a global pandemic? What happens afterward? Can’t we keep those units? Why not turn them into supportive housing?

COVID-19 is a crisis but so is chronic homelessness. So why does it take a global pandemic to take action? It takes communications professionals and the client advocates who we work with to connect those dots. There’s never been a better opportunity to advocate for solutions to homelessness using strategic communications to create engagement that will last beyond these emergency measures. Here are RALLY’s insights on how advocacy communications have a clear role in finding solutions to homelessness, now and beyond COVID-19.

Show What’s at Stake

People are more engaged with an issue when they are shown the human impact and feel personally connected. It’s important to understand what really leads to homelessness and what the solutions are. We found that being able to tell the stories of those who come in and out of homelessness based on a missed rent check or a health bill helps make people see themselves in that same possible scenario and think: I’m also one rent check away from losing my apartment. That will become increasingly true as we know the number of people who will become homeless is going to substantially increase due to the pandemic and economic failings. If you are somebody who nearly missed a rent check the problem starts to break down and becomes a little more relatable. You can begin to have a real conversation about solutions to homelessness and with an issue that has so much emotion and deep history surrounding it, that conversation allows for more breakthroughs. And when you think of these people as your neighbors or even yourself, it shifts your thinking about what the solutions can be and what you’re willing to fight for.

Build Your Base

Communications plays a clear role in building activists who organize and create solutions to homelessness. It’s clear that those that started this conversation years ago by building an engaged base of supporters will be leading the debate. Growing the number of people in your community who focus on awareness of what causes the problem and what the solutions actually are, and understands the difference between chronic and economic homelessness and solutions is essential.

Bring the Right Focus

Because homelessness is a systems-level issue and because there are a lot of facets to the homelessness crisis, it’s very important for advocates and communicators to bring the right focus. On one hand, there’s a simplicity to it — homes end homelessness. On the other hand, if you ask people about the causes of homelessness or where we fall short when finding solutions to homelessness, the conversation gets very murky and filled with negative stereotypes. It’s important to focus on helpful narratives.

Take a Fresh Look

People don’t approach homelessness as a fresh problem. Instead, they think the problem is wrapped up in hopelessness or in internal politics that have built up over a long period of time. Taking a fresh look at economic inequalities, the lack of affordable housing and rent-control in most major cities, land use, and building policies allow room to connect the components that drive homelessness in order to truly untangle the issue and create the necessary changes to house those in need.

Pay Attention and Be Clear

Homelessness is an intersectional issue. Understanding how disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected is important. It’s paramount to remember that when communicating about who is experiencing homelessness in order to engage all communities in this effort.

Think Ahead

What happens the day after the quarantine is lifted and presumably, these pandemic crisis solutions to homelessness are released? What we are finding is that people who do homeless service provision — which is every day a crisis and an emergency — have a harder time thinking ahead and need strategic communications professionals to help do that for them. Our work involves focusing efforts on permanent solutions to the homelessness crisis, long after the COVID-19 crisis is behind us.

A key element in providing strategic communications support is employing digital tactics to build community engagement and reach new audiences, in addition to driving earned media to take the public’s concern about homelessness, which goes along with housing as the number one issue in California and give it a useful outlet. Inclusive communicators and advocates can help the public have an avenue to engage with this issue and identify the symptoms and solutions of one of the most moral imperatives of our time.

Thank you to our clients and partners who are on the frontlines supporting the communities most affected right now.

RALLY is an issue-driven communications firm | Certified force for good by B Corporation

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