Livestreams and Viral Videos Are Making Creators Rich While Fueling Anti-Homeless Fear, Misinformation, and Punitive Policy
Why do creators film misery? Because it pays extraordinarily well.
There are nine livestream feeds operating simultaneously, showing the streets of Kensington 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thousands of viewers log in and leave comments, not about the content creators who are profiting from the dehumanizing footage, but about the subjects in these videos, who are being exploited for clicks, views, and ad revenue. Affiliate dollars line the pockets of so-called “influencers” who are really just masters of dehumanization, pushing other people’s pain as part of their brands.
Kensington is an open-air drug market where fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine flood the streets. The people featured in this footage are struggling through unfathomable experiences of addiction. From drug-induced amputations and wounds to fatal overdoses, from selling their last belongings out of desperation to kneeling face-first on the ground in tears, the content creators capture each agonizing moment, forcing them to participate in a narrative that keeps the clicks coming at the cost of their dignity and consent.
The people in these videos are being used to spin a profitable narrative that infers homelessness is synonymous with addiction, and that people using drugs deserve punishment as opposed to housing, services, and care. This deeply harmful agenda is constantly pushing anti-homeless rhetoric, turning a non-stop livestream into anti-homeless legislation that blurs the lines between the drug crisis and the housing crisis.
These practices have drawn growing criticism from advocates, legal experts, and some policymakers because their message is damaging and disingenuous.
The people featured in the footage are being filmed without their permission. They are unwilling participants in an agenda that harms us all.
The tragedy is quite profitable for online content creators looking to rage-bait audiences into hating homeless drug addicts and ignoring America’s ever-burgeoning housing crisis at the same time.
Monetizing Misery: Content Creators Shame Drug Addicted People for Profit
Content creators notoriously pose as concerned citizens and proceed to videotape and exploit people at the lowest times in their lives. This constant stream of anti-homeless content is readily available to anyone, at any time, with no regard for the privacy of those depicted in the footage. People who churn this kind of content can skyrocket to fame and fortune, racking up millions of followers and views along the way.
How do creators profit from other people’s misery? The answer is through an unjust social system that rewards this dehumanizing behavior. Platforms like YouTube, X, and Meta promote intense, sensational footage they believe will rage-bait audiences, and it works. The more the algorithm promotes this agenda, the more views and clicks the content receives, and all those clicks are money in the bank for the content creators through revenue streams that include:
- Monetization through ads
- Sponsorships and affiliate deals
- SuperChats, live donations, and membership fees
Invisible People has identified a nonstop stream of dehumanizing content, including nine livestreams in Kensington and 3 in Skid Row that rake in $6,000 to $9,000 a month, showcasing America’s opiate-induced sickness across the web. Millions of people tune in by clicking through the thumbnails, and faceless creators get rich off of other people’s pain.
Ironically, the viewers become addicts too, and their search for increasingly more disturbing footage fuels these feeds. It’s worth noting that YouTube does have community guidelines and monetization policies that prohibit “shocking, exploitative, or demeaning content involving vulnerable individuals.” But enforcement is inconsistent. When ad revenue is restricted, creators can lean harder on other revenue streams.
When Misery is Monetized, Clickbait Becomes Law
In a candid discussion with Invisible People reporters, Barbara Poppe, formerly of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, drew from decades of experience in the sector. She said the narrative spun by some influencers hurts public policy for several reasons. Namely, this kind of social media footage:
- Demonstrates extreme examples of homelessness, showcasing them as if they are the norm, which rallies voters to support punitive policies over solutions-based legislation. Put simply, the footage doesn’t show the millions of homeless families, workers, senior citizens, students, and disabled people who are also homeless but don’t fit the image of being addicts. This robs them of the resources they need to remedy their predicament, and it also undermines America’s housing crisis by making it look as if it isn’t the leading cause of homelessness when studies conclude that it is.
- Teaches Americans to fear their neighbors, particularly if those neighbors are unhoused.
- Inhibits fearmongering in general. This leaves no space for human-centered stories of resilience, and it steers support away from proven solutions that work.
- Fails to tell the full and true story of homelessness by focusing on only one subset of the homeless population.
“Outrage becomes policy and people vote for bans, sweeps, and funding cuts,” explained Poppe. “Needs are growing faster than resources.”
Poppe is referring to the following:
- The multi-million shortage of affordable homes that’s not being addressed.
- The fact that there is not a single community in the entire nation that has enough permanent housing to serve everyone enduring homelessness.
- Drastic insufficiency in social safety nets as housing voucher programs remain underfunded, SNAP benefits are cut, and housing demands exceed the supply.
- Even temporary solutions are lacking, as there are currently not enough shelter beds to meet the demand.
Through all of this, homelessness continues to rise and remains misunderstood.
“It’s because social media outlets are demonstrating extreme situations that make Americans fearful,” Poppe continued. “This is an intentional strategy to accelerate the public will to arrest and move along people who are experiencing homelessness, and it’s just plain evil at its core.”
“Content creators are quick to broadcast imagery of people struggling with drug addiction through their homelessness, but they never show homeless children living in cars with their moms. They never show homeless people working, parenting, or battling life-threatening illnesses,” Poppe said. “All of that is happening too, but it isn’t being shared broadly through public media to the extent that negative, fearmongering videos are being displayed.”
It is worth noting that these videos intentionally misinform the public about the actual causes of homelessness. They also instill false narratives about addiction, by honing in on the individuals suffering from substance abuse disorder but refusing to expose the machine that got them there and completely ignoring the multifaceted aspect of homelessness and the role the housing crisis plays in driving it.
Misrepresenting Drug Addiction Undercuts the Truth and Undermines Solutions
Regardless of intent, these creators are profiting from their exploitation of homeless people and, simultaneously, contributing to the anti-homeless rhetoric that makes criminalizing homelessness appeal to voters. They are doing this by refusing to tell the whole story of who is actually becoming homeless and why.
For example, family homelessness has increased by 39% in the past year alone. Meanwhile, marginalized low-income communities are catching the brunt of the economic downturn and the climate crisis. We are losing millions of affordable homes and not replacing them. Because there’s such a gaping supply and demand issue, homelessness is hitting hard amongst:
- Families
- Veterans
- Workers with full-time jobs
- Students
- People with disabilities and more
Rising rental rates are crushing working-class households. Nationally, a minimum-wage worker would need to work nearly 100 hours a week to afford a modest rental and well over 100 hours for a two-bedroom, according to NLIHC’s ‘Out of Reach’ report. Three out of four working American households cannot afford the median home price, and close to half of all US renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
Studies now indicate that roughly 6 in 10 US workers are one missed paycheck away from a financial crisis or potential homelessness. These are the stories you don’t see in the feeds, and they are just as real and deserve your attention.
It Is Time to Stop Rage-Baiting and Start Advocating
“Homelessness isn’t about lack of affordable housing. It’s about drug addicts that want to wander around and live in tents on the sidewalk,” said Fox News host Jesse Watters in a shocking segment on live TV.
This is the same false narrative being spread by content creators filming vulnerable people without their permission. They want you to think homelessness is a personal failure, not a policy failure. Once viral, this seeps into public opinion and become law. But the truth is not up for debate.
The leading cause of homelessness in America is a severe shortage of affordable housing – more than 7 million homes short, to be precise. The people on the brink of becoming homeless include families, seniors, disabled Americans, working people, veterans, kids, survivors of domestic violence, and those living one emergency or one missed paycheck away from losing everything. Some struggle with addiction. Many do not.
Yet sensationalized footage of drug use becomes the “face” of homelessness, drowning out everyone else and misleading the public about who is actually affected.
As Former Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Barb Poppe put it, “they might be short clips, but they are doing a lot of damage by pulling money away from resources that work and funneling it into institutions that have not worked in the past.”
And that is the point.
These videos shift blame, reduce empathy, and justify policies that punish people instead of housing them. They make Americans fearful. They make cruelty seem reasonable. And they make it easier for lawmakers to divert funding away from evidence-based solutions and toward policing, prisons, and punitive laws that have never ended homelessness anywhere.
If we continue to allocate homeless funding toward prison cells and away from evidence-based solutions like housing and services, the drug crisis and the homeless crisis will grow — separately and together as per the design.
This is Part 2 of a six-part Invisible People series on the media machine behind anti-homeless rhetoric. Part 3 in this series unpacks how algorithms, influencers, and dehumanizing imagery train the public to fear and blame unhoused neighbors. Here is the link to Part 1.
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