“Homeless” v. “Unhoused”

Since we have been talking about messaging and words, I have noticed a growing ire on the site about the term “unhoused” being used in lieu of “homeless.”

I will start with full disclosure: I have no particular dog in this fight in the sense that this is not my area of expertise. I will say that while “unhoused” does not bother me, I tend to actually prefer “homeless” as I think it captures the situation, and that “unhoused” does not seem to necessarily solve some linguistic problem caused by “homeless.”

My sense is that activists think that “homeless” is passive, while “unhoused” suggests that there is an active unhousing of people due to policies that make an adequate housing supply unavailable. Also, I have seen that some activists note that “homeless” is inaccurate, as the individuals in question simply use the streets or shelters as their homes, and what they really lack is their own actual house. I fully see how all of that is debatable in terms of accuracy.

BTW, it seems worth noting that unhoused.org is a UK site, so the issue of using these words is not just one of American Democrats causing a problem, per se.

I honestly think a lot of the problem in these cases is that people simply don’t like change, and when they read or hear a term, they don’t expect it bumps them out of what they are consuming, and they find that annoying. Worse, it makes them stop and think about the words and which one is the proper one.

Now, if I am an advocate for the subject at hand, then that’s mission accomplished, isn’t it?

A similar example would be “slaves” versus “the enslaved.” See also, “undocumented” versus “illegal.”

There are arguments one can make about why some terms are more accurate than others. I am persuaded that “illegal alien” has a dehumanizing element to it. Indeed, it is not wholly accurate and, worse, we have certainly seen how people like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller have leveraged the notion of “illegals” to fuel their terror campaign. If they are all “illegal” then they are all criminals who deserve what they are getting!

Language matters. I would absolutely prefer that Americans, writ large, thought of non-citizens who lack certain visas as “undocumented” as opposed to “illegals.” It would be harder to dehumanize the “undocumented.” Granted, “illegal alien” is better than “wetback.”

And while “enslaved” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, I understand and support the idea of recentering the attention on the act of first kidnapping and raising human beings a chattel as opposed to passively labeling someone a slave.

Miles may, of course, vary.

Setting aside all of that, did the terminology switch get your attention? Are you talking about the topic, even if it is just to gripe?

Well, again, mission accomplished, yes?

And even if a given attempt at terminological tweaking does truly annoy you, did it really change your views of policy on the topic?

The last three paragraphs are why I tend not to let these things bother me. Further, the reality is that language is constantly evolving and that that evolution is often driven by political considerations. Sometimes reframing the way we all look at something (or getting us to look at it all) requires a little friction