With the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows for the arrest of homeless individuals for sleeping outside and with the release of the homeless count data showing incremental but slow progress, it’s more important than ever that we are careful and intentional about how we frame our narrative around homelessness.
Criminalizing or consistently “otherizing” homeless individuals will do nothing to solve the problem.
It’s a persistent, long-term challenge, and how we think about unhoused individuals matters. In fact, how we talk about them matters. Language matters. It shapes our perceptions, influences our attitudes, and drives our behaviors.
Throughout history, language has been pivotal in changing societal attitudes towards marginalized groups. For instance, the shift to terms like “African American,” “LGBTQ,” or “neurodivergent” has done as much as anything to help lessen marginalization, respect identity, and form a more inclusive society.
This isn’t about being politically correct; it’s about shifting our attitudes — and hopefully, behaviors — to enable more micro solutions while we continue to push the macro solutions forward (and we are).
L.A. is a region of neighborhoods. Heck, even San Pedro has boroughs. And nearly every single one of those neighborhoods includes people experiencing homelessness. In fact, those people are our neighbors. I think that’s how we should start referring to them. Not as “homeless,” “unhoused,” or “experiencing homelessness.” But simply as “neighbor.”
There is no one homeless archetype. And as any service provider will tell you, there are 75,312 solutions for the 75,312 neighbors experiencing homelessness today.
Some of these neighbors are living in temporary shelters, some of these neighbors struggle with substance abuse or mental illness, and some of these neighbors are enrolled in college while living in their cars.
Their homelessness isn’t even similar. The only thing they have in common is the same thing I share with my neighbor Mark: proximity. (And for the record, I don’t even like Mark.)
First, by referring to homeless individuals as “neighbors,” we emphasize our shared humanity and community.
This simple shift in terminology could have profound effects on how we view and treat those experiencing homelessness, not as faceless statistics but as individuals with stories, struggles, and aspirations similar to our own. And maybe those shifts simply reside inside of us for a while, but I think they’ll trickle out. Warning: you may become a nicer person.
Second, calling someone our “neighbor” implies a shared responsibility. It suggests that the well-being of each individual affects the entire community. It reminds us that they are here, with us, in our communities, and pushing them away or thinking of them as people “apart” from us will do nothing to help them, or ourselves.
Finally, it could influence policy. When policymakers truly view homeless individuals as neighbors, they are more likely to adopt compassionate, inclusive policies that recognize their humanity and our shared plight as a community of constituents.
This shift is partly influenced by the nonprofit Harbor Connects’ approach to service. Bringing housed and unhoused neighbors together to solve one of the most challenging issues of our time.
Because what we’re really talking about is community. We know that housing solves homelessness. But we also know that housing is not enough. Aside from all the social services we know are important, it is community that heals individuals who have experienced homelessness.
Human beings flourish in community. Public health experts consistently tell us that. For instance, why do encampments flourish? Because people inherently look for community. They seek it out. They create it. They want neighbors.
To be clear, we don’t always like our neighbors. Neighbors annoy us, sometimes even harm us. But they are still our neighbors. They are fellow humans trying to make their way in the world, just like we are, even if we don’t always agree with how they’re trying to do it.
With a challenge as long-term and difficult as homelessness, solutions can seem daunting. They are expensive, long-term, complex, and hard. Most of us feel helpless. But this is one thing we can do now. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s immediate.
We can offer homeless individuals respect and empathy through nothing more complicated than stopping our practice of defining them by the fact they sometimes don’t sleep with a roof over their head. We can define them as what we know they all are: our neighbors. spt
