Gen-Z Philadelphia couple from successful families shoot to fame as HOMELESS influencers insist living in a tent is better than getting a job or having to pay rent

A Gen-Z couple from Philadelphia have become homeless influencers after vlogging their tent home and claiming homelessness is a ‘flex’.

Leland Brown Jr. and his girlfriend Breanna Hubbard have become famous for uploading videos documenting their lives as ‘homeless’ people living in a tent with yoga mats as beds and a makeshift toilet.

Brown, 28, was thrown out of his family home by his father after he refused to get a job. “He told me I was grown and had a son, so I had to figure it out,” said Brown, who has a seven-year-old son who lives with his mother.

The 28-year-old then moved in with Hubbard, 22, and her family in Hatfield – but after that didn’t work out, the couple packed up and moved to the Woods in September 2022.

Brown was excited to experience nature, having never even been camping, but the harsh reality soon set in. “It was a lot when we got it all in place,” he said. ‘It was crazy dealing with the animals and the cold.’

Six months after becoming homeless and moving to the woods, the couple began vlogging their experience and sharing videos online.

Brown lost her job after a year – but the couple’s videos had racked up millions of views online, so they decided to embrace life as influencers.

Hubbard’s mother encouraged the couple to go to a local U-Haul lot to escape the cold, edit their videos and do “office work.”

They made themselves at home in their unit, setting up furniture themselves and turning the storage box into a tiny living quarters.

The pair created a three-part TikTok series documenting the experience of living in a storage container — which generated more than 22 million views and even made national news.

Their temporary house was taken away after U-Haul got wind of their plan.

“Living in a self-storage unit is a violation of state and federal housing laws,” Jeff Lockridge, a spokesman for U-Haul International, wrote in an email to The questioner.

“I was always prepared to be kicked out because of the video,” Brown said. ‘I didn’t expect it to go as viral as it did, but when it did I knew I couldn’t delete it. I made money from it, so we had to run with it’.

The couple moved back into the woods – where they currently live in a tent decked out in a full house setup.

In the tent, cardboard is laid over the ground and soft blankets. They use yoga mats, two each, and air mattresses as beds and make their surface cozy with pillows and blankets.

A charging station is used to power the couple’s phones and laptops, and they even have a ‘stove’ and frying pans where they cook and cleaning supplies to wash their dishes.

Brown says he prefers the term ‘homelessness’ and has even described the ‘low-cost lifestyle’ as a ‘flex’, boasting that their living situation is a sacrifice worth enduring for the independence that comes with it.

“I’m very educated and intelligent and so am I (Hubbard), but people tell us how to live because their perspective in life is different,” Brown said.

Brown comes from a successful family. His father is a senior engineer and director of a military and aerospace communications company.

The father and son have an understanding: ‘My dad says (I) have to stay in the woods and make it work,’ Brown said. ‘He’s trying to teach me to be strong and survive.’

“I think Leland has been very clear that this is a choice he has made and he stands by his choice,” his father wrote in an email. ‘If no one is hurting anyone, content development is a great way to share his approaches to how he wants to live his life, while allowing others to follow his journey.’

Hubbard’s family have welcomed her back into their home, but she has refused them – saying: ‘I had to leave to be the best version of myself.’

Brown and Hubbard faced controversy in January after it was revealed they accepted money from a homeless charity despite having nearly $4,000 from a GoFundMe and making thousands from some of their TikToks.

The owner of the homeless charity said she felt ‘taken advantage of’ after the pair accepted a stay in a hotel room and other offers from the charity lady.

Their excuse was that they don’t want to “mess” with the money they’ve made making TikToks or the thousands that have been donated to them on GoFundMe.

They want to save their money and spend it on a van or motorhome at some point in the future.

“We don’t want to work the rest of our lives,” Breanna said, while Leland added “at a traditional job.”

In addition to their influencer funds and GoFundMe donations, the couple has also rented cars to do DoorDash runs and cleaned hotel rooms to make some extra money.

In a February video titled ‘When You’re Homeless & Not Getting a Job #genz’, Brown said he planned to become an ‘entrepreneur’.

“I’m not getting a job,” he said in the TikTok video. ‘I’ve had jobs in the past, and I’ve been fired in 90 percent of those jobs. It’s not for me. I’m an entrepreneur, self-made, and so am I (Hubbard).’

The couple currently has 177,000 followers on TikTok and more than three million likes. Their best video has over 16 million views.

Recent videos show the couple bathing in a hotel bathroom, cleaning their ‘home’ by sweeping, wiping down their furniture and washing dishes.

They caption the videos things like “When you’re homeless and being bullied” and “When your parents kick you out”.