Show Some Love For Our Homeless:
A 7 Day Advocacy Response That Made Toronto City Council U-Turn

I worked with nonprofit Tiny Tiny Homes as Head of Communications and Marketing and now continue to work with the organisation in an advisory role. Founded by innovative social media creator and building manager Ryan Donais, Tiny Tiny Homes builds mobile micro-shelters for people experiencing homelessness in Toronto. The nonprofit offers small, secure spaces at a time when overstretched shelters leave many relying on unsafe tents.

Challenge

Several weeks after what had seemed like a positive meeting with Toronto City Council representatives, on 7 February 2025, founder Ryan Donais unexpectedly received a cease and desist letter. It ordered the removal of Tiny Tiny Homes’ emergency shelters from a downtown park and set a deadline of Valentine’s Day, just seven days later.

These shelters were protecting some of the city’s most vulnerable people, including a cancer patient and others for whom overcrowded shelters were unsafe. The order posed a serious threat to the organisation’s ability to operate and placed those living in its emergency shelters at immediate risk.

Insight

The city’s oversight of a Valentine’s Day deadline exposed a clumsy contradiction: Toronto calls itself the “City of Compassion,” and many Canadians see their national identity as fair, kind and humane. A deadline that threatened vulnerable people on a day symbolising love highlighted a gap between words and action. It struck a nerve around identity and values, giving people something they could rally behind. 

Underneath this, we recognised something deeper: many people walk past homeless individuals without seeing them. They are often treated as invisible. So how do we get people to care? By centring real people with protected characteristics and intersectional identities, we could make the issue feel personal and relatable. You might not know a homeless person, but you know a woman. You know someone living with an illness. This sociological approach helped to turn “them” into “us.”

Campaign Strategy

Use the Valentine’s Day moment as a catalyst for a rapid, identity-framed public advocacy push: “Show Some Love for Our Homeless.”

  • Expose the contradiction between the city’s compassionate identity and its actions

  • Humanise the impact through lived stories and clear statistics

  • Highlight intersectional identities to build empathy and relatability

  • Rally public support to pressure compassionate collaboration over law enforcement

Execution

We moved fast. Volunteers covered the threatened shelters with large Valentine’s Day hearts — creating a striking press image that made the city’s decision hard to defend publicly.

The campaign launched with an open letter and petition on Change.org, addressed to the Mayor and Council, setting out the human cost of removal, the human rights issues at stake, and the systemic failures that led to this moment.

Among those living in the shelters were Tera, a woman who had once slept on a street grid to stay warm, and Brent, a man with cancer who had been sleeping in a shop doorway. Their stories were deliberately paired with hard data: women experiencing homelessness face higher rates of violence, and those with serious illnesses face significant health risks outdoors. This combination of personal stories and clear facts reframed the issue from an abstract policy debate into a human one.

A simple heart-led visual identity pulled everything together. Posters, short videos and social content were created and shared at speed by volunteers and allies, making it easy for people to get involved. Targeted media outreach helped the story break beyond activist circles and into the national conversation. Behind the scenes, communications, creative, legal, media and stakeholder workstreams were tightly coordinated.

Within a matter of hours, the organisation’s social feeds were flooded with comments of solidarity and support, with hundreds tagging and emailing their local councilors. It was clear that City’s action was not one Canadian’s were proud of. One social comment captured the public view: “I’d expect this from the USA but not Canada.”

Within just 2 days, the petition surpassed 22,000 signatures, creating immediate momentum and visibility, and rose to above 50,000 by the end of the the campaign.

Coverage

The story broke nationally, campaign appearing in more than 10 major outlets, including CBC News (article and TV segment), Global News (article and TV segment), Yahoo News Canada, CityNews Toronto, NOW Toronto, Canadian Press via Castanet and QP Briefing, Canadian Inquirer, Atin Ito News and Seneca Journalism, with extra pickup through Ground News, HeadTopics, NewsMinimalist and other aggregators.

Impact

The campaign was an enormous success. What started as a legal threat became a moment of national visibility and solidarity. With a budget of less than $100 dollars, we achieved:

  • Over 10,000 petition signatures in 24 hours on change.org and over 50,000 signatures in total

  • High social media engagement and rapid audience growth, with followers jumping from:
    - 22k to 90k+ on Instagram (309% increase)
    - 18k to 230k+ on TikTok (1,178% increase)
    - 10k to 28k+ on YouTube (180% increase)

  • The Mayor’s office responded, confirming no Tiny Tiny Homes structures would be removed “in the near future” and opening more productive formal talks with the organisation. The organisation has since been working in a progressive partnership with Toronto City Council.

My Role

I worked closely with Tiny Tiny Homes Founder, Ryan Donais, and the Tiny Tiny Homes board to create a fast response which would guarantee the media attention we needed. Ryan served as campaign spokesperson, while I led the campaign strategy, creative execution, and media and stakeholder engagement. This included narrative development, key messaging, scriptwriting, copywriting, press outreach, legal alignment, volunteer mobilisation, and public advocacy planning.

It was a week of fast decisions and a collective effort — and it paid off.

Creative Credits:

Strategy: Ant Jackson
Creative Direction: Ant Jackson
Copywriting: Ant Jackson
Art Direction: Laura Osbourne
Design: Laura Osbourne
Media Relations: Ant Jackson, Ryan Donais
Creator Engagement: Ryan Donais
Video Production: Ryan Donais, Amelea Sutherland, Ant Jackson