Family homelessness is often hidden in plain sight.
Parents may still be going to work and taking their children to school each day, all while living in a car, staying temporarily with friends or relatives or wondering where their family will sleep that night.
In the 2023-24 school year, U.S. public schools identified more than 1.5 million students experiencing homelessness, according to the National Center for Homeless Education. About three in four were doubled up, staying temporarily with other people after losing their housing. Those situations rarely register in the public picture of homelessness.
Invisible No More, a digital exhibit created by Family Promise of Los Angeles, is one effort to make those experiences visible. It centers the voices of families who have experienced homelessness, sharing their stories in their own words.
We spoke with Lina Takada, executive director of Family Promise of Los Angeles, about what inspired Invisible No More, the themes she heard from participating families and what she hopes people take away from the project.
*This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Where did the idea for Invisible No More come from?
It came from years of working in family homelessness. There’s often a huge disconnect between what people think homelessness looks like and what family homelessness actually looks like. We wanted to create a platform where it wasn’t just service providers and advocates talking about the complexities of family homelessness. We wanted families who have experienced it to be able to share their own stories and perspectives. Hearing directly from someone who has experienced it can be much more impactful than hearing from someone who works in the field.
What do people most often miss about family homelessness?
One of the Instagram posts I shared to tease the campaign included a quote that said, “You could have met someone experiencing homelessness today and never have known.”
That’s a core reality of family homelessness. A lot of the families we serve are going about their regular routines. Parents may still be going to work every day while wondering, “Where are my kids going to sleep tonight? Is it too hot or too cold to sleep in our car? Will the friend whose couch I’m sleeping on let me stay another night?”
These are the realities families may be facing that we simply don’t see when we meet them.
There’s also a stereotype that families experiencing homelessness don’t want to work or simply aren’t trying hard enough. In reality, many of the parents we serve are working. They just don’t have a stable place to call home. For some parents, that might mean waking up at 4 a.m. to take public transportation and get their children to different schools before heading to a full-time job.
Why did a digital exhibit feel like the right way to tell these families’ stories?
Originally, we wanted to create a mini-documentary to showcase these family stories, but we realized that not everyone was comfortable sharing their experiences on camera. We still wanted a way to share the quotes, stories and perspectives we had gathered, so we created a digital exhibit where people could explore them in an interactive way.
What themes came up most often in families’ stories?
One of the major themes was affordability. We heard from families who were working full time, sometimes with a second job on the weekends, and still struggling to keep up as the cost of rent, groceries and gas continued to rise. They were doing everything they could and still finding it difficult to make ends meet. For many of these families, Los Angeles is home. It’s where they grew up and where their families have lived for generations, but rising costs are making it increasingly difficult for them to stay.
What did you learn from sharing Invisible No More with your community?
In Los Angeles, some of the world’s most affluent communities are just miles from lower-income ones. We’re located in Torrance, where you can see those differences firsthand. Sharing these stories in more affluent communities was eye-opening because the families experiencing these challenges are quite literally their neighbors.
If there’s one thing you hope someone remembers from Invisible No More, what is it?
What I hope people remember from Invisible No More comes from something one of our families shared: “Homelessness can happen to anyone.” It could happen to your sister, your brother, another family member, or a close friend. Treat people with compassion and give people grace. You never know what someone may be going through.
Invisible No More asks us to look beyond common perceptions of homelessness and listen to families who have experienced it themselves. Their stories show that family homelessness can exist alongside school drop-offs, full-time jobs and everyday routines, often hidden from the people around them.
Making those experiences visible is an important step toward understanding the full scope of family homelessness and building community-based solutions that help families regain stability. Across nearly 180 local sites, Family Promise works alongside communities to do exactly that, helping families stay housed, find shelter when they need it and return to a stable home.
Explore Invisible No More and find Family Promise in your community.
