• Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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    7 months ago

    I’m with the other person, virtue signaling in words is not helping the issues.

    I do not believe the homeless community came out and said “I hate the word homeless, call me unhoused.” There issue is AFAIK with houses, not name calling.

    Saying “unhoused people” instead of “homeless people” doesn’t make them sound any more like a person; it’s just a different qualifier.

    EDIT: Even worse in this case, there are a number of people that are trying to use “unhoused” to distance “homeless” from the traditional image of an unemployed person that may or may not be asking for money on a street corner. They want to capture people that may have employment but live in a car or something.

    Like… This is pretty clearly about the former (someone struggling to make ends meet and begging for moeny), not someone struggling to buy a house.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The term homeless people puts the emphasis on homeless, and allows NIMBYs to forget that these people are, in fact, people.

      The term “people experiencing homelessness,” frames the situation much better. They are people who didn’t make a choice to be homeless, they are just experiencing homelessness because the system has said that is ok for anyone to experience the warzone that is homelessness.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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        7 months ago

        The term homeless people puts the emphasis on homeless, and allows NIMBYs to forget that these people are, in fact, people.

        I really think this needs to be challenged. Sociologists need to prove this actually has some positive effect; I don’t believe it does. Particularly in this case, homelessness was not an offensive term.

        We just get ourselves into pointless debates about the politeness of a particular term, people looked down upon for “using an outdated term to talk about the issue” (and patting themselves on the back for “doing something for the issue”), while real people endure real suffering.

        I don’t believe anyone is going to suddenly see a person as a person because someone told them “we’re relabeling that.” If they’re the dude in this article, they’re going to roll their eyes and keep handing out fake money until people actually hold them accountable for their bad behavior.

        This is not much different than the former University of Akron president trying to rebrand the university as “Ohio Polytechnic Institute” (to community outrage I might add).

        The left wing of the US needs to stop relabeling shit and actually do something about it. Even at the local level, we have way too many mayors trying to solve homelessness by spending extra money to make urban design hostile to homeless people. That’s not Republicans, that’s not the labeling, that’s a failure of the establishment to actually address affordable housing concerns and gaps in the social safety net.