How Did the Homeless Suddenly Become ‘Unhoused?’
Language is important, says the linguist. But, for the most part we are not linguists, so who gives a damn? Yet if we care for one another and try our best to love our fellow man, we’ll not abandon him or her to the disintegration of their humanity.
A case in point is the homeless
You know them, they’re the crumpled, sleeping in doorways, riding the tram or bus through the night in winter to keep from freezing to death. If you pay attention to their stories, and there are many, their crooked path to homelessness is close to our own, with just a bad break or the lack of a friend who could (or might) bail us out.
Bad breaks are easy come by today. Some are not pretty and drug dependence is an all-time winner for the unpretty. Let me make a quick comparison: we lost 50,000 of bravest our soldiers in the ten years of the Vietnam War and yet today opioid drugs kill 200,000 a year. But maybe drugs are not your problem, possibly you simply got dumped on the street by a mental-health clinic beca…