| My point is that the word homeless has become more ambiguous than ever. Even your post is conflating what I was describing as "homeless" for people living out of vehicles/tents as living rough on the street. But the general vocabulary everyone uses does not distinguish between the two, it's all just homeless. And this is how we arrive at people being surprised by the quality of people they find as technically homeless. There are many people who technically qualify as homeless who are simply not paying expensive ass rent, but living out of vehicles in desirable areas where the rent is expensive, and doing so quite comfortably and connectedly thanks largely to the smartphone. We need a different word to describe this class of homeless people. They're more willfully homeless than the classical meaning of homeless, because their homeless option doesn't really suck as much as it used to. I've lived out of a car quite a bit throughout the bay area, and talked to a bunch of people doing the same thing along the coast in the process. There are numerous folks living out of vans waking up to million dollar views every day without paying any rent or mortgage. They're living the dream, should we still call them homeless? |
If a person is at risk of assault or arrest for their inability to go indoors and has no immediate ability to remedy that, I have no issue calling that person homeless. Regardless of how one views that person's life decisions they face the same systemic issues as any other homeless person.
If your point is strictly that the language is ambiguous, perhaps it would be more appropriate to use "people that choose a vagabond lifestyle" (which is close to your original statement) over a confusing mix of "homeless" and " "homeless" " to refer to the tiny subgroup that you are referring to.