Elon Musk just said the word "homeless" is "propaganda."
The truth is: That word *is* actually frustratingly imprecise and has come to mean different things.
I've covered homelessness for years and I think what we call "homelessness" is actually three things...
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The truth is: That word *is* actually frustratingly imprecise and has come to mean different things.
I've covered homelessness for years and I think what we call "homelessness" is actually three things...
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Comments
The first thing "homelessness" is: The discrete crisis (usually an eviction) that results in someone literally losing their home.
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https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/insights/telling-real-story-homelessness-and-busting-biggest-myth
The background crises that led to that final eviction — and the state of extreme precarity in which eviction results in someone literally sleeping outside.
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All the crises that continue happening once somebody is living outside — the state of deprivation, stress, and alienation that changes one's behavior, the adaptations one makes to survive in a strange, harsh environment.
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And yet most people perceive only one, maybe two, of these overlapping crises.
Which one you see depends in large part on your politics, the stories you've absorbed.
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