People are drawn to hacks with their promise of an easy fix. Shelter, the UK charity that campaigns for tenant rights in Great Britain, is using hacks in its campaign to highlight how the unaffordable cost of housing is putting people at risk of homelessness. Its hacks are tongue-in-cheek.

The campaign’s humorous cost-of-living hacks are set against an alternative solution – that the British Government takes responsibility for the current housing crisis and makes housing more affordable. The campaign creative was deisgned by Shelter’s in-house creative team. The hacks were illustrated by art historian and curator, Federica Martini.

The campaign is built on research that found almost 1.1 million (1 in 7) renters had their rent increased in the last month and the surge in calls that the charity’s emergency hotline received. It is running in outdoor sites, social media, contextual posts on sites such as Reddit, and in an editorial partnership with Vice. It will also include the use of beermats in pubs designed to prompt conversation, a special mural in Shoreditch being unveiled over several days and creative posted outside the Conservative Party Conference.

 Sama Bhutta, director of communications, policy and campaigns at Shelter, commented, “Every day we’re being bombarded in the news by cost-of-living hacks. But whatever the latest hack is, it’s just a sticking plaster that can’t possibly cure runaway rents that are pushing people into homelessness. Every day our frontline services are supporting people who have nothing left to cut back on. And the reality is that thousands of families won’t be able to keep a roof over their head this winter because they can’t afford to heat their home or pay their rent. Our campaign shows how these cost-of-living hacks are negligible in the face of the scale of the housing emergency. By making our audience look twice, we hope to raise awareness of the reality for struggling renters and show that it’s time the government takes action to make housing genuinely affordable.”