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 because funding is tight and mental-health, like PTSD in wounded warriors, is always just a boot-strap issue—fucking get over it.

But there are other ways to end up in a doorway or a cardboard box

Losing a job in middle-age, an unexpected, costly and uninsured illness, or a nasty divorce are but three examples. Are they fault-free? It depends on your point of view I guess, but in these times of layoffs by the tens of thousands, homelessness lurks behind more than one tree.

It will probably not surprise you that Black and Native Americans are more likely to become homeless than other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. Although Black people comprise 13 percent of the general population and 21.4 percent of those living in poverty, they account for 40 percent of the homeless population.

Wow. First slavery, then a hundred years of rascism and, finally, homelessness—a hat-trick in life handing you the short-straw.

But while one person’s homeless is a tragedy, 582,462 is a statistic

Joseph Stalin taught us that, humanitarian that he was, having killed off 25 million of his own citizens. And statistics, we are told, will confess to anything if you torture them sufficiently.

But language, and its importance to understanding our fellow man, was my original point and I have wandered away from that a bit. George Carlin does a great viideo on euphemisms that’s not to be missed.

“I'll give you an example of that,” says George. “There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap. In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock . Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock . Almost sounds like the guns themselves.

“That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue . Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue.

“Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

“Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time.”

So it is with homelessness

Without anyone asking, without anyone wondering if it’s a good idea or not, homelessness has quietly become ‘the unhoused.’ It cropped up recently in a major newspaper and now I see it everywhere. I’ll just bet that’s a comfort on those cold and friendless nights in a doorway.

“Well, thank god for that. At least I’m no longer homeless, just unhoused. I feel warmer already.”

For the rest of us, that unsightly and unpleasant and unsolvable problem on the streets and parks and alleys in America has just become a little less pathetic, a smidge less traumatic. We don’t have to feel quite as guilty and unloving as we stumble over or step around a cold mother holding her child to her body for warmth.

She’s not homeless. The two of them are just unhoused.