The Media Brand’s Polished Videos Redefine Homelessness as a Choice, Influencing Young Audiences and Pushing Punitive Policy
When viewers watch PragerU’s viral YouTube Video “What Do We Do About the Homeless?”, they are told:
- “Homelessness is not a housing problem, it’s a human problem. The primary drivers of homelessness are drug addiction and mental illness.”
- “The homeless make rational decisions about where they want to live. The homeless go where the policy environment is the most permissive.”
- “If cities stop allowing public encampments and public drug consumption, and start prosecuting property crimes, they will have much more success redirecting the homeless away from a life of self-destruction, and toward a life of hope through mental health treatment, drug rehab, and job training. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? So why don’t we do it?”
The problem is, these claims are not supported by evidence. But they are packed in a format designed for impact: a glossy, five-minute video with high production value, confident narration, and an authoritative tone.
Despite its name, PragerU is not a university. It is a media organization producing short-form ideological content that looks and sounds like education, but functions more like persuasion. And the strategy works. Short-form video, now one of the most common ways young and passive news consumers encounter information, is engineered to be gripping, fast, and memorable. When misinformation is delivered in this format, it spreads easily and shapes public attitudes long before facts can catch up.
Misinformation Disguised as Higher Education
PragerU is an online media nonprofit that has built a massive audience with short videos that argue homelessness is driven primarily by addiction and mental illness, not housing. Its “What Do We Do About the Homeless?” video advances those claims directly and pushes cities to ban encampments and public drug use. The message is simple, emotional, and easy to repeat. And because it’s delivered in short, polished videos designed to feel educational, millions of people absorb it without ever questioning whether it’s true.
“Dennis Prager’s right-leaning media platform has built an audience of millions by marrying slick Hollywood production values with MAGA stars and conservative ideology,” said Invisible People Founder Mark Horvath.
PragerU is funded by major donors, including Dan and Farris Wilks, billionaire brothers who built their fortune through fracking and climate change denial. The Wilks brothers run a network of nonprofit think tanks that help them influence political decisions. They were among PragerU’s earliest and most influential backers. Other wealthy funders include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a private grantmaking organization with explicitly conservative policy goals.
According to publicly available tax records, PragerU received more than $66 million in annual contributions (2023–2024), reflecting sustained support from high-net-worth donors and ideologically aligned foundations.
PragerU creates countless videos just like the one mentioned above, and many of them rely on selective framing, emotional oversimplification, or misleading contrasts to advance a predetermined narrative. While many institutes of higher education have criticized PragerU for spreading misinformation, promoting conservative views, and presenting right-wing political messaging as fact, they continue to flourish thanks to wealthy and politically influential supporters.
How PragerU Misuses Data
One of the many ways PragerU misguides its audience is by citing a credible source, then cherry-picking data to support its anti-homeless rhetoric. For example, while UCLA’s California Policy Lab found a higher co-occurrence of mental illness and substance abuse among unsheltered homeless people (people who are living outside instead of in shelters or transitional living), the policy lab did not claim that three-quarters of all unsheltered people have either condition. This stat has been actively misused by punitive policy advocates, including PragerU.
PragerU presents this as proof that addiction causes homelessness. But the researchers themselves emphasize that the housing crisis is the primary driver — and that behavioral health challenges often worsen because people are forced to live outside.
Research shows unsheltered people have markedly higher rates of behavioral-health challenges than those in shelters: in one multi-city study, 50% of unsheltered adults reported both a mental-health issue and a substance-use condition alongside a physical health problem (“trimorbidity”). Recent California data linking service records find that about 40% of participants had evidence of severe mental illness or substance use disorder—high, but far from “everyone.”
And crucially, the relationship runs both ways. Homelessness is not only something that can follow mental illness or addiction — it can also cause, worsen, or trigger them. Living outside is traumatic. Sleep deprivation, isolation, violence, stigma, and constant displacement all increase psychiatric distress and substance use vulnerability. People don’t stay homeless because they are unwell. They become unwell because they are forced to stay homeless.
Most researchers agree that the connection between homelessness and mental illness is a complicated, two-way relationship.
“An individual’s mental illness may lead to cognitive and behavioral problems that make it difficult to earn a stable income or to carry out daily activities in ways that encourage stable housing,” said Peter Tarr, Ph.D., with the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. “Several studies have shown, however, that individuals with mental illnesses often find themselves homeless primarily as the result of poverty and a lack of low-income housing. The combination of mental illness and homelessness also can lead to other factors, such as increased levels of alcohol and drug abuse and violent victimization, that reinforce the connection between health and homelessness.”
Furthermore, Tarr points out that homelessness is a traumatic event in itself. Experiencing homelessness can contribute to higher levels of psychiatric distress.
PragerU’s content often leaves out the real causes of homelessness. Their videos focus on mental illness and substance abuse, but do not mention the fact that rents have been rising faster than wages, and that half of renter households are cost-burdened. The federal minimum wage is a poverty wage in every state.
Anti-homeless rhetoric not only benefits them, but also their wealthy supporters and the policies that make them richer. Anti-homeless rhetoric can do more than encourage others to turn a blind eye to homelessness – it can turn hearts against and minds away from policies that alleviate poverty. This ultimately protects the economic interests of corporate landlords and other wealthy stakeholders. When we ignore the forces of systemic poverty, we allow the continued profiting from poverty. America’s largest corporations contribute to poverty through cheap labor; wealthy landlords do as well by charging high rents.
Gripping Young Audiences
It’s easier to inoculate young viewers through short-form videos, and PragerU knows this. Recent media studies show that a majority of adults under 30 say they let “the news come to them” through social media platforms rather than seeking it out. For many, social media has replaced traditional news outlets entirely.
This isn’t because young people lack curiosity — it’s because our information environment has changed. News is no longer something we go looking for; it is pushed to us by algorithms. When information is delivered this way, people are less likely to pause, evaluate the source, or look more deeply before moving on to the next clip.
This creates fertile ground for PragerU’s messaging: an audience scrolling quickly, overwhelmed by bad news, and searching for something simple, confident, and emotionally clear. It’s a perfect storm for anti-homeless rhetoric to take hold.
“It’s kind of something my sister and I say to each other almost every day. We’re like, ‘Everything is terrible. It’s 2025.’ That just kind of is how it feels right now. There’s just always so much negativity coming out and horrible things happening to people,” said one female participant in the above study.
When people are exhausted, simple narratives feel like relief. And PragerU offers a simple story: homelessness is about individual failure. Not housing. Not wages. Not policy. Just choices. For young people who are scared or overwhelmed, narratives like this can create the impression that extreme poverty or homelessness is unlikely to affect them as long as they “make good choices.”
Journalistic Shift and the ‘Expert’ Problem
In today’s media landscape, anyone can look like an authority. Traditional journalism relies on editors, fact-checkers, and researchers. Short-form ideological content does not. But online, both appear side-by-side. A polished video delivered confidently can feel as trustworthy as a reported article — even when it isn’t.
The line between reporting and propaganda has blurred. Information travels faster than the time it takes to question it. That speed benefits content built on emotional reactions rather than reflection. PragerU thrives in that environment.
The Addictive Design of Short-Form Video
PragerU specializes in short-form videos, and there is a reason for it. It’s addictive. Short-form video formats have taken over social media. While its popularity spread with TikTok, the same endless-scroll format now defines Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts as well.
Media psychologists have documented that these platforms use intermittent, variable rewards, the same reinforcement pattern found in slot machines. Swipe, swipe, swipe — waiting for the next clip that hits. This design locks attention in the moment and encourages emotional, intuitive processing rather than slow, reflective thinking.
This makes simple, confident, emotionally charged messages easier to absorb and harder to question.
PragerU’s most widely viewed content follows this model. Even when the videos are longer, the pacing is the same: fast, certain, no context, no nuance, no time to ask questions.
The message is not just heard. It feels true.
When the Story Changes, Policy Follows
PragerU’s homelessness content is powerful not because it is factual, but because it is emotional, simple, and repeated. Research on narrative framing shows that when homelessness is portrayed as the result of personal failure, empathy decreases and support for punitive policies increases.
When people are encouraged to believe that homelessness is a choice, it becomes easier to justify sweeps, arrests, and forced removal instead of housing solutions.
This shift in public attitude has real consequences. Throughout history, the belief that some lives are worth less has paved the way for exclusion, institutionalization, and displacement. Rights are not taken all at once—they erode when the public stops seeing certain people as fully human.
To counter this narrative, we must change the story—not by overwhelming people with statistics, but by bringing them closer to the humans behind the headlines.
Stories of lived experience build empathy and understanding.
Stories from frontline providers show that homelessness is solvable.
Stories that acknowledge people’s fears give us a place to begin, not a reason to retreat.
We do not ignore the scared neighbor. We meet them where they are and show them that ending homelessness benefits all of us—safer communities, fewer emergency calls, lower public costs, and fewer people suffering outside.
Language That Changes Minds
Invisible People Founder Mark Horvath offers examples of how we can shift our language to reshape public understanding:
Instead of: “We need to get everyone an apartment.”
Say: “We need to connect people with stable, affordable housing and the support they need.”
Instead of: “We should house everyone.”
Say: “Safe, stable housing reduces ER visits, lowers crime, saves taxpayers money, and is the only permanent solution to removing encampments.”
Instead of framing it as something “given” to homeless people, frame it as infrastructure.
Example: “Just like roads and clean water, housing is the foundation every community needs to thrive.”
Show it’s about fixing a system, not rewarding individuals.
Example: “Our housing shortage is driving homelessness. The only way to reduce tents on our streets is to increase the supply of homes people can afford.”
Describe housing as a tool, not the final gift:
Example: “Housing is the starting point for recovery, stability, and work—it’s how we end homelessness for good.”
“We have to tell the human story. We have to show that there’s a person in the tent, how their life is being damaged, and how [homeless sweeps] just pushes homelessness to another area, which ultimately makes encampments grow as homelessness continues to rise,” Mark said. “By bringing viewers into the life of a single human being, we create connection, empathy, and understanding that statistics alone can’t achieve.”
This is Part 4 of a six-part Invisible People series examining how anti-homeless narratives move from online content into public policy. In Part 5, we trace how rage-bait clips and zombie livestreams harden public attitudes, turning online hate into anti-homeless policy.
Here are links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Please share this series to help us make the truth louder!