The CA Homeless Housing Needs Assessment
Over one-third of all unhoused people in the U.S. live in California, yet CA leaders had never done the research to answer a crucial question: “What would it take to solve homelessness?”
So CSH and California Housing Partnership did it for them. The California Homeless Housing Needs Assessment breaks down the numbers policymakers need to create real solutions.
We built a sub-brand and launch strategy that made sure this data got into the hands of the people who could turn it into action.
Roles & Responsibilities:
Content strategy & production
Brand tone & voice
Digital & OOH ad copy
Web copy & UX copy
Web content entry & QA
Organic social
Digital & OOH
We had two jobs: make policymakers see this as the easiest “yes” of their careers and push the public to demand action.
And find a way to make an $8 billion price tag sound cheap.
For policymakers, I crafted messaging to position the assessment as a rigorous, data-backed roadmap—breaking down costs in a way that made the investments feel like a no-brainer.
For the public, I made the assessment impossible to ignore by showing our audience just how little of the state budget it would take to make a real impact—turning complex policy into a simple, undeniable call to action: “This is doable. So do it.”
Web/UX
My goal with the website was to make key findings from the assessment digestible while grounding them in stories from people who have experienced homelessness firsthand—so the campaign never lost sight of the people behind the data.
I also wrote an endorsement page to make it as easy as possible for visitors to go from “awareness” to “advocacy” with just a few clicks.
Social
Impact
After making a major media splash, we caught the attention of key legislators and staffers. The campaign also generated a 600% surge in email endorsements for CSH compared to their previous efforts—skyrocketing from 210 to over 1,500 in just a few months.
