Right-wing media have a long history of attacking homeless people, and so far 2026 has seen a continuation of that trend. Pundits have calle
Sage Hodil at MMFA:
Right-wing media have a long history of attacking homeless people, and so far 2026 has seen a continuation of that trend. Pundits have called for sending homeless people to different countries, “internment camps,” and institutions. Right-wing media figures have also pushed dehumanizing rhetoric by referring to homeless people as “bums,” “blighty,” “junkies,” “mentally deranged,” and even joking about their deaths.
Right-wing media have consistently demonized and mischaracterized homelessness, sometimes advocating for aggressive solutions
Research shows that homelessness is driven primarily by economic factors, and the belief that it’s a personal choice is largely a myth. From October 2021 to November 2022, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, conducted the “largest representative study of homelessness since the mid-1990s” and found homelessness was mainly determined by “high housing costs and low income.” Margot Kushel, who led the study, has criticized the media for “misdiagnosing the problem” when they “blame homelessness on substance abuse,” arguing, it “simply isn’t true” that homeless people “refuse housing or that their problems make them impossible to house.” [University of California San Francisco, The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, 6/2023; Truthout, 11/6/23]
Experts from the Legal Defense Fund say that punitive approaches, such as forced displacement and criminalization, “will not end homelessness or address its root causes.” As The Legal Defense Fund stated, “Study after study show that the best way to address homelessness is to provide people with safe, affordable housing and to offer additional supports and services if needed.” [Legal Defense Fund, 8/1/25]
Yet right-wing figures like Fox host Jesse Watters have spent years calling homeless people “a virus,” a “contagion,” and an “invasive species” and proposing carceral solutions. Watters, for example, has fantasized about sending homeless people to a “mega prison,” advocated for “bulldoz[ing]” homeless encampments and “institutionaliz[ing] everybody,” argued “it was more civilized when we banished them to asylums and put them in strait jackets,” and proposed “federally funded opium dens where the homeless can kill each other.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/21/23, 9/22/22, 9/22/22; Fox News, The Five, 3/24/25, 6/3/19, 9/15/22]
The right-wing media have long had a history of vile rhetoric aimed against unhoused people and the homelessness crisis in general.
