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ziq wrote

Un implies a lack of something but if it's a voluntary lifechoice like in lettuce's case, house-free seems more appropriate

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__0 wrote (edited )

Not really directed at you but more the terminology around homelessness

Imo homeless isn’t really a slur, as much as people try to reframe and euphemise it, “person experiencing houselessnes” admittedly doesn’t have the same ring to it, but i feel like there isn’t a real push from people who actually are homeless to change the terminology…

I think a lot of the rhetoric on changing the terms used is at best misguided and in some cases actually harmful,

There to me is a pretty clear difference in connotation between house and home and shelter.

A house implies a specific type of shelter, it is a term that implies a default normative “housing”,

a home implies a sense of belonging and ownership that its occupant has, not necessarily a structure - potentially a space, but usually referring to a house … and a shelter implies a temporary or makeshift nature.

Homeless people often have to make due with shelter, such as a tent,

Homeless people often have their shelter removed in street sweeps where cops destroy or confiscate their shelter, often forcing them into state mandated shelters or prisons.

Homeless people often have couches to crash on, or find temporary accommodation in housing, they might find housing that is not entirely safe or adequate. They may have found housing but it may simply be shelter, they may not have any autonomy or control over how the space.

Is someone who is squatting a derelict house without access to utilities waiting for eviction or demolition no longer homeless because they are in a house? Is it simply about quality of housing?

Ive rented plenty of apartments that I wasn’t able to settle into, or with abusive roommate situations, in some cases i ended up settling enough that i could accept a place as a home, in others i was just waiting till i could leave. If I didn’t have a source of income and a few people who i could ask for favours, i would have become homeless and houseless.

Im a lot closer to considering my current residence a home, but i’m going to need to move again soon

Having an out group of an identity policing a terminology or name that that identity is “supposed to be addressed by” just kind of gets to me (not meaning to imply that you are doing that)

I know a lot of people who work in proximity to the so called “poverty industrial complex” the policing of identity comes from the top, from people who have a background in stuff like corporate management, often with a really liberal and generalized idea of identity politics.

Ofc visible poverty is incredibly stigmatized, I think instead of treating terms such as “homeless” as being problematic we should more address the depth of classism in our society, awareness of the things that make our society so unliveable.

Main criticisms i hear is The lack of support, lack of access to housing, the drug war, an economy built around real estate speculation, cities that aren’t built for people, the fact that suburbs often just dump their poor into cities because of centralized services that do the bare minimum, and etc etc etc.

Obviously as an anarchist my ideas of what “programs” and “services” would look like is very different on a structural level. A lot of the damage that these programs aim to fix are the result of government acting to facilitate the functions of capital, and markets also operating in conjunction with the mechanisms of capitalism (etc)

Also of course a lot of people who are homeless are also “working class” … the housing and job markets are so obviously fucked that people can both work pay taxes and be homeless at the same time. Maybe even try to pay off a car loan and accumulate credit card debt 💖

Heres a link i disagree with a lot of the things they say in it, i just think a lot of the rational is bogus… https://www.lacommunityalliance.org/life-skills-blog/houseless

And the criticism section of this wikipedia mirrors some of my thoughts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language

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ziq wrote (edited )

homeless isn’t really a slur

i was being sarcastic but great effort post lol

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__0 wrote

Figured haha, just wanted to put my thoughts out there on the subject matter, as I’ve heard a lot of people saying stuff like that without any sense of irony, had to stop myself from writing a book there 😂

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