(FiveNation.com)- Last week, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority took to Twitter to urge people to “abandon” the term “the homeless” and embraced terminology like “people who are unhoused.”
In a tweet on Monday, the Homeless Services Authority posted a graphic on “How to talk about homelessness” that provided examples of approved terms to use in place of the bad old terms people have been using for years.
Rather than say “the homeless,” the LA Homeless Services Authority suggested, “people experiencing homelessness.”
Instead of “homeless people,” the Homeless Services Authority suggested, “people who are unhoused”
But even “the unhoused” is unacceptable. Instead of that, the Homeless Services Authority urged people to call them, “people living outside.”
Okay, so you can call them “people who are unhoused,” but you can’t call them “the unhoused?”
Does that make any sense?
According to the LA Homeless Services Authority, the old terms “carry a negative stigma which dehumanizes people experiencing homelessness and erased their individuality.”
Using terms like “people of color” and “marginalized people” also erase individuality. But how much do you want to bet the LA Homeless Services Authority has no problem with those terms?
The new terms are supposed to “emphasize personhood over housing status” by acknowledging that their present experience doesn’t define who they are.
This might explain why the homeless problem in Los Angeles County has only gotten worse in recent years.
The agency in charge is more focused on semantics than fixing the problem.
