You might have met some mortar-fyingly boring dates off of Tinder or some real block-heads, but now you can match with an actual, proper brick.
Yep… Brick is 22 and you can match with it on Tinder, you know, your trusty dating app. What are we talking about? Well, Shelter, the housing charity, are using Tinder to get more young people considering their options when thinking about the housing crisis that looms over so many of us.
The idea is, you match with a brick, you get talking to the brick (yep, really!) and then it sends you over to the website, the Lonely Brick. Here you can sign a petition that will in turn be presented to MPs in a bid to show them just how many people are clamboring for a solution to the housing crisis ahead of May’s election. Politicians can make their manifesto promises right now and maybe they’ll consider adding in some stuff about the youth of this country.
Where did this idea start? It started with Boris Johnson, who gave a speech at the Conservative party conference in October, and delivered it to a brick. The London mayor told the brick it: ‘would not be alone’ and pledged that the government would use a billion of bricks like it as part of a plan to bring about more affordable housing.
However, only 20% of the 23,000 homes built in the past year have met their ‘Affordable Housing’ target. And we say ‘Affordable Housing’ because the definition of ‘affordable’ can be very bendy. It’s a bit boring to get into, but in short, the rental market doesn’t seem to be changing for the better.
We wonder, though, is this campaign going to the best place? After all, it’s MPs and property developers who have the power to make more affordable housing and housing more affordable. And it can’t really be about awareness – a recent poll from SpareRoom.co.uk found that 97% of renters don’t think the Government is doing enough to make housing affordable.
So we asked Shelter. They explained that this awareness grabbing thing is to help us get to the root of the problem – MP’s who won’t ensure affordable housing is delivered – rather than actually get young people to snog bricks. They said: 'Bricks should indeed not be alone, they should be cemented together into new homes to solve the housing shortage. So, what better way to find a mate for the lonely brick – and highlight this issue to some of the young people directly affected - than through Tinder?
'We urge everyone to go to the website and get involved.'
Visit the LonelyBrick.org.uk
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.