Introduction

Funders Together to End Homelessness San Diego (FTEHSD) promotes an effective and efficient system of housing and services to help end homelessness in San Diego County. Mixte works alongside FTEHSD to research, test, and implement effective messaging with key audiences and provide strategies that allow to create powerful narratives and raise awareness for advancing lasting housing solutions.

Our Objectives

Our initial goal was to launch a large-scale messaging campaign on multiple social media platforms that targeted San Diego County civically minded residents that see housing as a solution to solve homelessness and to then use what we learned from those campaigns to develop a data-centric white paper to help influence and move elected officials to adopt the most effective messaging into their talking points, media, and policy. The findings of this white paper would then inform our approach to a second messaging campaign that would involve social media advertisements, influencer partnerships and media outreach.

Here’s how we did it:

  • We partnered with a third-party organization to develop a brief survey which we used to listen to what San Diego County residents had to say about homelessness.
  • We built a media library and built social media ads to continue engaging and bringing awareness to the homelessness in San Diego.
  • We collected and analyzed data and compiled it into a comprehensive visual analysis.
  • We used our findings to guide a messaging and digital ad campaign intended to drive policymakers, nonprofit organizations and San Diego residents towards housing-driven solutions to end homelessness.
The Outcome

The final product used the combination of field research and paid advertising to develop a sweeping, informative white paper that demonstrated that people were more likely to support housing first solutions if they were accompanied by messages that focused on the opportunities such solutions had for both people experiencing homelessness and for communities. 

Based on these findings, we developed a messaging framework that aimed to guide the way providers, community leaders and government officials communicated on housing as a solution to homelessness. 

To actually make sure people used this messaging framework and changed how they talked homelessness, we launched a subsequent campaign that involved:

  • Messaging trainings for members of the San Diego City Council
  • Twitter ads and organic posts
  • Media outreach

Then we analyzed how the media and people-on-the-ground talked about homelessness and affordable housing in news articles and across Twitter and whether our campaign made a difference. 

In the time following the launch of our campaign, San Diegans and local media not only talked about affordable housing more (with local media mentioning the topic up to 458.2% more and social media users increasing how often they talked or reacted to posts by 126.26%) but people generally expressed more demand for solutions-based approaches to homelessness and housing, including calling on local policymakers to fast-track housing projects in their neighborhoods.