People are able to sponsor a birdhouse with the money going directly to the local homeless population.“I chose homelessness because it’s a cause that’s near and dear to me personally and I just see the impact on people. I don’t know anyone directly that is homeless, but I see it everywhere and it’s a universal problem,” said Mattes.“I know that people’s lives change in an instant — when you think of how people end up homeless, it’s often a single accident that happens.
Meanwhile, the giant bird featured on the sign and each birdhouse were made to shed light on the many factors that Mattes believes contribute to homelessness.Including birdhouses made of food labels and campaign signs as well as ones built to look like Oliver’s Correctional Centre and a school house.“There’s a large bird on the side next to us here and that relates to the size of the problem in relation to the size of our solutions.
“There’s no single one there’s no there’s no magic bullet here. There’s because each person that’s homeless has a different cause for their homelessness,” he said. For now, they are working on replacing some of the empty poles but are not sure if they will add any more birdhouses to the collection.