We’re still almost $4,000 short of our fundraising goal for this month’s RAINN fundraiser, so please give if you haven’t! I heard a random podcast host refer to “the unhoused” on a thoroughly apolitical podcast recently. It was another data point indicating that, as time has gone on, using “unhoused” as a euphemism for homelessness has reached exit velocity and may well become progressive writ soon. It sucks.
It's the latest form of virtue-signaling Russel Conjugation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation. If you can't make the thing itself seem high status, you can at least make, or try to make, saying certain words about whatever the thing is low status.
Totally agree- pushing the use of "unhoused" apparently creates a perception of progress or improvement via language norms that feels good to some on the left despite the lack of actual change created.
And, semi-related, I'd love to hear about the continued focus on housing-first programs in areas where there is simply no available housing. I agree with the concept in theory but it seems counterproductive in many places with a vacancy rate hovering in the low single digits and rent skyrocketing.
There is currently a vogue among historians for saying "enslaved persons" rather than "slaves" for similar reasons. It takes a great leap of imagination to believe that someone who sees the word "slave" and somehow doesn't understand that slavery is a moral horror will nevertheless be enlightened by the term "enslaved person."
One of the most depressing elements of all this is that the Democrars will all begin using unhoused, if they haven't yet, but almost none of them will even attempt to propose an idea, let alone legislation, to address the fact that a lot of people don't have homes.
“Unhoused” (autocorrect tried to type “unhorsed” which is an entirely different state of personal emergency) may apply to some small minority of otherwise productive individuals who, through little or no fault of their own, find themselves below American living standards and are earnestly trying to work themselves back up. We can add military veterans who sacrificed their bodies and minds for our defense and returned to find a support structure woefully inadequate for the level of care they need and deserve. These are true victims of the system, and using the destigmatizing term “unhoused” may actually be ok. Though I agree with Freddie’s point that normalizing the word and its implication probably will reduce the urgency to address the problem.
But after living in Austin for almost a decade in the late 90s-early 2000s, and spending many summers in the PNW, I’m confident in saying the vast majority of homeless people are not victims, unless you include being victims of their own bad life choices (or often deliberate life choices!), and don’t want or deserve anyone’s sympathy as they willingly leech off the goodwill of others as long as they possibly can. We can continue calling them “homeless” and that’s putting it nicely.
Note how our society privileges the symbolic and the abstract over the concrete and material.
This is because it's a lot easier to set up diversity committees or think up new names that gloss over unpleasantness, than it is to address uncomfortable realities and attack entrenched interests.
This one has always baffled me in a way other euphemisms don't. Homeless and unhoused are the same word. Like... they literally mean the same thing. It's not like slave/enslaved where you can at least claim there's a subtle linguistic difference. It's the same word!
being homeless isn't an identity, it's a material status. Increase the number of homes, and the number of people who are homeless goes down.
That's why we need far more housing development. In places where housing capitalism is strong -- ATL, DFW, HOU -- you have much fewer "people currently experiencing unhousedness"than in more regulated housing markets like NYC, DC, and SF.
I know it goes against all ideological commitments leftists have made, but please look at the evidence on just this one issue.
Thanks for the good words on behalf of candor and rhetorical impact over creeping propriety. As usual, Orwell beat you to it, but at least that let’s you know you’re on to something. In his case it was the memorable formulation of “the power of facing unpleasant facts”, which isn’t something highly valued by those for whom control of nomenclature is a sufficient substitute for effective solutions to real problems.
This is an example of identity creep. The reduction of attributes / descriptions to identity. It's purpose is to "affirm how valid" it is for someone to live in destitution and filth because it's "who they are". Serves the function of normalizing the status quo.
Also, Freddie, what do you think of the Mayor's plan re: involuntary commitment? It had the predictable backlash where people waited and saw what the social script they were supposed to use to argue against it was and then did that. The "maw" as you call it. But if you read the actual plan it has such radical ideas as "stop making it illegal to share medical records during hearings on institutionalization" and "require follow up care to be arranged adequately before people are streeted". The reason people oppose these is that they think that the mentally ill are "super valid" (until, you know, they act mentally ill in a way that hurts other people) and that the only way to help another person is to "affirm" their right to live in agony and filth.
The fundamental limit of liberalism is that the only solution we can even conceptualize is affirmation. Hence identity creep. Just increase the number of identities we need to "affirm" and get rid of "stigma" and voila!
People who don't have a place to live don't care if they are referred to as "homeless" or "unhoused". They have more important concerns. And people who insist on using a particular word are clearly more interested on taking care of their own feelings rather than doing something productive for the non-domiciled.
This is such a frustrating tendency among progressives - to fixate on the language used to describe the situation rather than the situation itself. It fundamentally speaks to their powerlessness: we're not going to be able to find these people homes, so let's make them (and us) feel better about them being homeless. Call me crazy, but I'm more interested in finding them a place to live!
Many people prefer to live in a tent or vehicle and call those accommodations home, so they would argue that they are not homeless. If the bar is raised to "house" being the standard, they can't really argue that a tent is a house, as house implies a permanent structure. "Unhoused" encompasses more people defined into the care of activists.
Homeless is such a benign term to begin with, I don't get how that is disrespectful to anyone. It's about as toothless a term as you can get.
And for the life of me I don't understand how 'unhoused' is somehow a better term than homeless, in being less offensive that is. Neither of them are offensive, but like Freddie said homeless works just fine for it. It makes no sense to create a new term.
The only reason I can think of for this is that this is just another word, in the now exhaustive list of words that the far Left has created, being used for language control. Control the language, control the speech. Control the speech, control the people. Eat your heart out Huxley.
It's the latest form of virtue-signaling Russel Conjugation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation. If you can't make the thing itself seem high status, you can at least make, or try to make, saying certain words about whatever the thing is low status.
In the meantime, the fundamental barriers to ameliorating homelessness remain: https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem-when-cities-build-housing-homelessness-goes-down, regardless of the words one chooses.
Totally agree- pushing the use of "unhoused" apparently creates a perception of progress or improvement via language norms that feels good to some on the left despite the lack of actual change created.
And, semi-related, I'd love to hear about the continued focus on housing-first programs in areas where there is simply no available housing. I agree with the concept in theory but it seems counterproductive in many places with a vacancy rate hovering in the low single digits and rent skyrocketing.
There is currently a vogue among historians for saying "enslaved persons" rather than "slaves" for similar reasons. It takes a great leap of imagination to believe that someone who sees the word "slave" and somehow doesn't understand that slavery is a moral horror will nevertheless be enlightened by the term "enslaved person."
One of the most depressing elements of all this is that the Democrars will all begin using unhoused, if they haven't yet, but almost none of them will even attempt to propose an idea, let alone legislation, to address the fact that a lot of people don't have homes.
“Unhoused” (autocorrect tried to type “unhorsed” which is an entirely different state of personal emergency) may apply to some small minority of otherwise productive individuals who, through little or no fault of their own, find themselves below American living standards and are earnestly trying to work themselves back up. We can add military veterans who sacrificed their bodies and minds for our defense and returned to find a support structure woefully inadequate for the level of care they need and deserve. These are true victims of the system, and using the destigmatizing term “unhoused” may actually be ok. Though I agree with Freddie’s point that normalizing the word and its implication probably will reduce the urgency to address the problem.
But after living in Austin for almost a decade in the late 90s-early 2000s, and spending many summers in the PNW, I’m confident in saying the vast majority of homeless people are not victims, unless you include being victims of their own bad life choices (or often deliberate life choices!), and don’t want or deserve anyone’s sympathy as they willingly leech off the goodwill of others as long as they possibly can. We can continue calling them “homeless” and that’s putting it nicely.
Note how our society privileges the symbolic and the abstract over the concrete and material.
This is because it's a lot easier to set up diversity committees or think up new names that gloss over unpleasantness, than it is to address uncomfortable realities and attack entrenched interests.
Our language has become unmoored from our principles, and yeah, unhoused is just stupid.
This one has always baffled me in a way other euphemisms don't. Homeless and unhoused are the same word. Like... they literally mean the same thing. It's not like slave/enslaved where you can at least claim there's a subtle linguistic difference. It's the same word!
being homeless isn't an identity, it's a material status. Increase the number of homes, and the number of people who are homeless goes down.
That's why we need far more housing development. In places where housing capitalism is strong -- ATL, DFW, HOU -- you have much fewer "people currently experiencing unhousedness"than in more regulated housing markets like NYC, DC, and SF.
I know it goes against all ideological commitments leftists have made, but please look at the evidence on just this one issue.
Thanks for the good words on behalf of candor and rhetorical impact over creeping propriety. As usual, Orwell beat you to it, but at least that let’s you know you’re on to something. In his case it was the memorable formulation of “the power of facing unpleasant facts”, which isn’t something highly valued by those for whom control of nomenclature is a sufficient substitute for effective solutions to real problems.
This is an example of identity creep. The reduction of attributes / descriptions to identity. It's purpose is to "affirm how valid" it is for someone to live in destitution and filth because it's "who they are". Serves the function of normalizing the status quo.
Also, Freddie, what do you think of the Mayor's plan re: involuntary commitment? It had the predictable backlash where people waited and saw what the social script they were supposed to use to argue against it was and then did that. The "maw" as you call it. But if you read the actual plan it has such radical ideas as "stop making it illegal to share medical records during hearings on institutionalization" and "require follow up care to be arranged adequately before people are streeted". The reason people oppose these is that they think that the mentally ill are "super valid" (until, you know, they act mentally ill in a way that hurts other people) and that the only way to help another person is to "affirm" their right to live in agony and filth.
The fundamental limit of liberalism is that the only solution we can even conceptualize is affirmation. Hence identity creep. Just increase the number of identities we need to "affirm" and get rid of "stigma" and voila!
People who don't have a place to live don't care if they are referred to as "homeless" or "unhoused". They have more important concerns. And people who insist on using a particular word are clearly more interested on taking care of their own feelings rather than doing something productive for the non-domiciled.
This is such a frustrating tendency among progressives - to fixate on the language used to describe the situation rather than the situation itself. It fundamentally speaks to their powerlessness: we're not going to be able to find these people homes, so let's make them (and us) feel better about them being homeless. Call me crazy, but I'm more interested in finding them a place to live!
Given enough time, enough rope, and a bit of trauma, American liberals will get to goose stepping.
Many people prefer to live in a tent or vehicle and call those accommodations home, so they would argue that they are not homeless. If the bar is raised to "house" being the standard, they can't really argue that a tent is a house, as house implies a permanent structure. "Unhoused" encompasses more people defined into the care of activists.
Homeless is such a benign term to begin with, I don't get how that is disrespectful to anyone. It's about as toothless a term as you can get.
And for the life of me I don't understand how 'unhoused' is somehow a better term than homeless, in being less offensive that is. Neither of them are offensive, but like Freddie said homeless works just fine for it. It makes no sense to create a new term.
The only reason I can think of for this is that this is just another word, in the now exhaustive list of words that the far Left has created, being used for language control. Control the language, control the speech. Control the speech, control the people. Eat your heart out Huxley.