Publish with mqtt with trigger.payload as part of topic

Configuration
1

I am trying to publish via mqtt to set a sensor state, the only thing is I would like to publish to a specific topic based on the specific trigger

I’m using

topic: "ha/{{ trigger.payload | lower }}_home_status"

but it literally publishes to “ha/{{ trigger.payload | lower }}_home_status”

in the other part of my automation it translates the trigger.payload to the correct string so I know my syntax should be correct.

MTA: Must use data_template