Housed

Experiential Design

This is a project I did while I was in University. We were challenged with choosing a physical location within our city that we wanted to improve using our graphic design skills. I spent almost every day driving past a homeless camp, and it truly broke my heart, so with this in mind, I chose that as my location. Not really understanding how I was going to solve the homeless epidemic with graphic design, I chose to put that aside and focus on the research. 

How was I going to help this situation? I mapped out who this area effects, obviously the people who lived in this camp, but also nature around the area, wildlife, people working at the shelter near by, pedestrians that walked by, as well as people in cars on their commute to work or school. Through this research it dawned on my how much, we, as community members judge and turn away from the homeless community. Could I use graphic design to help change the perspective of the homeless? YES, so this is the direction I went. 

I created surveys, cultural probes, and other research methods to understand why the community feels so strongly against the homeless, but also what makes them feel so good about their own house, and what makes it feel like home. The intention behind this was to create conversation around suddenly not having that house or home anymore. My biggest discovery through the research process, was that as a society we do not use the term homeless anymore, we now use the Un Housed. Why? Because a house is a physical thing, a home is a place or a feeling. Now that I've gathered all of this information, now I had to decide what to do with it. 

I created a non profit called "Housed" 

Housed is a resource and support centre for the un housed, but it's biggest movement would be an even they host in the community every year, that threads experiences into the event that help housed people understand the struggles of the un housed. The goal is to create empathy and understanding, so that anytime they encounter someone who is un housed, they can make different choices. The concept is "Every person has a home, our houses just look a little different." Saying, Abbotsford, our community is our home.