The non-profit RainCity Housing works to provide housing for the homeless in Vancouver.
Last year, it teamed up with the Spring Advertising agency to turn seven bus stop benches into awesome billboards that simultaneously promoted the agency's services and furthered its core mission.
By flipping an additional backboard attached to some of the benches, a homeless person could turn the billboard into a covered place to sleep at night.
And other benches lit up at night with a special message.
Though the creative billboards have long since been taken off the streets of Vancouver, the project has been drawing international attention in the wake of actions taken in London that seem to attack homeless people rather than the general problem of homelessness. There, businesses and apartment complexes have been laying down spikes outside their buildings to prevent homeless people from sleeping.
Anti homeless floor studs. So much for community spirit :( pic.twitter.com/Yz8VF7Ryid
- Ethical Pioneer (@ethicalpioneer) June 6, 2014
"Yes, it's the opposite of what's happening in the U.K. and even in Montreal, but we still have so much to do to provide housing so that people aren't looking at benches as an option to sleep on," RainCity Housing communications manager Bill Briscall told CBC News.