Publication Date: Wednesday, August 24, 2005
'Homeless' or 'unhoused'?
'Homeless' or 'unhoused'?
(August 24, 2005)If you call people who live on the streets "homeless," Norm Carroll is likely to correct you.
"They're 'unhoused,'" says the formerly unhoused man.
A politically correct objection over semantics? No, say local advocates for those who are down and out; there's a meaningful difference between the terms.
By one definition "homeless" refers to persons who are without shelter. The word can also be used to label people who lack citizenship.
It's the latter that Carroll finds objectionable. Palo Alto, after all, is his home.
Even when he lived on the streets, using downtown's Lytton Plaza as his official address for voter registration, he considered the city his residence.
"I had a home (Lytton Plaza), but people kept walking through my living room," he quipped.
According to a survey by the Community Working Group, the organization that is spearheading the new Opportunity Center, more than 40 percent of those who are without housing spent their childhoods on the Peninsula.
One homeless woman, Sue (see main story) , proudly says she was born at Stanford's Hoover Pavilion.
The term "unhoused" -- which can be found in the dictionary -- means "without shelter."
Like many words that become more commonplace over time, "unhoused" just may catch on. Even the city's police chief, Lynne Johnson, uses the term.
Carroll is a frequent speaker at City Council meetings, and when he was without shelter, he simply gave his address as "unhoused." In December, Carroll moved into the Palo Alto Hotel. Now he introduces himself by address. But he'll never say he was formerly homeless; he was "formerly unhoused."
-- Jocelyn Dong
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