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 has become a homeless influencer after vlogging their tent life 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 for beds and a makeshift toilet.

Brown, 28, was kicked out of his family home by his father after he refused to get a job. “He told me I was an adult and had a son, so I had to find out,” said Brown, who has a 7-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 the outdoors because he had never camped before, but harsh realities soon set in. “It was a lot once we got everything sorted out,” 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 experiences and sharing videos online.

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

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

They felt at home in their unit, even setting up furniture and turning the storage box into a small living space.

The couple 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 makeshift home 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 researcher.

“I was always ready to get kicked out because of the video,” Brown said. “I didn’t expect it to become as viral as it was, but when it happened I knew I couldn’t take it down. I was making money from it, so we had to get on with it.”

The couple moved back to the forest, where they currently live in a tent that is fully furnished.

Inside the tent, cardboard is placed on the floor, as well as soft rugs. They use yoga mats, two each, and air mattresses as beds and make their shelter cozy with pillows and blankets.

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

Brown says he prefers the term “homelessness” and has even described the “cheap lifestyle” as a “flex,” boasting that their living situation is a sacrifice worth enduring for the independence that comes with it is accompanied.

“I am very educated and intelligent, and so is 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 chief engineer and director of a military and space communications company.

The father and son have an understanding: “My dad tells me to stay in the woods and make it work,” Brown said. “He’s trying to teach me how to be strong and survive.”

“I believe Leland has been very clear that this is a choice he has made and that he stands by his choice,” his father wrote in an email. “If no one is being harmed, content development is a good method to share his approach to how he wants to live his life while others can follow his journey.”

Hubbard’s family welcomed her back into their home, but she denied them, saying, “I had to leave to be the best version of myself.”

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

The owner of the homeless charity said she felt ‘abused’ after the couple accepted a hotel room stay and other offers from the charity lady.

Their excuse was that they don’t want to “mess around” with the money they made creating TikToks, or the thousands donated to them on GoFundMe.

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

“We don’t want to work the rest of our lives,” Breanna said, and Leland added, “in 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 cash.

In a February video titled “When you’re homeless and can’t get 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 90 percent of them I’ve been fired. It’s not for me. I’m an entrepreneur, self-made, and that’s what it is (Hubbard).”

The couple currently has 177,000 followers on TikTok and more than three million likes. Their top video has been viewed more than 16 million times.

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

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