Framing family homelessness in the United States: media representations and the invisibility of families

Media coverage plays an important role in generating knowledge about and shaping understandings of homelessness. Although families make up about 35% of all those without housing in the United States, they remain relatively invisible in the media. We examine the amount of coverage and content of representations of homeless families in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in 2017 and 2022. Families receive little media coverage in comparison to single, homeless adults, especially men. When newspapers do address unhoused families, they mainly do so without reference to the race, gender, or sexuality of homeless families. As a result of limited and trivial coverage, it is difficult to find articles that provide extended discussion of family homelessness or explain the multi-layered structural factors that cause families to lose housing.