[grawprog]

>Does that mean that it's valid to label us both as "carless"?

Sure....I don't own a car, I have zero issue with being labelled as carless. It's very much true. I lack a car, I am carless. My reason for lacking one may very well be different than yours, but the effects of not having cars are probably similar between us. Such as walking, biking or relying on public transit to travel, being limited on locations one can travel based on availability of transport or distance etc.

Edit to include:

>if anything there should be a more broad term, something that includes people who are housing-unstable. I don't really consider the problem solved if a person worries every day that they might be homeless at the end of the next month!

I really like this idea.

[esotericn]

Right, but there's a huge distinction between having no car by choice, and having no car (particularly outside of metro areas), but really wanting one, because you can't afford it / have no licence / whatever.

That's his point. I've been hitchhiking before and slept outside loads. It's not meaningful to call that 'homelessness'. Is a nomad homeless?

Someone who simply falls behind on the rent and bounces around friends' sofas is in a very different situation to someone who has serious mental and/or physical health issues and starts to completely fall apart as a person.

[grawprog]

I never actually said which kind of carless person I am....it's not by choice. A label is just a way to describe something. People put far too much importance on the meaning behind labels these days. Labels don't have to be all encompassing and exclusive of other labels. They're just a convenient way of grouping and describing things with commonalities.

Calling someone carless or homeless has nothing to do with the reasoning behind it, it's a label for a current state. I agree, though, more fine grained labels should be used for tackling the causes behind these states. But calling someone homeless or carless isn't really offensive in and of itself.