Why ‘homeless’ is giving way to ‘unhoused’: a history of a term shift

Beverly Graham was sitting in an executive leadership class in Seattle in 2006 when she first recalls using the word “unhoused”.

The director of OSL, a non-profit that provides meals to food-insecure Seattle residents, Graham hadn’t planned on speaking up. But her classmates – two dozen regional business leaders – were discussing the number of homeless people in the area, and their perspective felt very different from the one she had gained after years of helping vulnerable Seattleites. She had to pipe up.

“I said, ‘They’re unhoused,’” remembered Graham. “They have a home: Seattle is their home.” OSL has used the word ever since to describe people lacking a fixed abode, feeling that “homeless” had gained discriminatory, ugly connotations.

The term caught on. Gradually it spread among west coast professionals working with or advocating for people living on the streets, and then it made its way across the US. Adam Aleksic, a Harvard linguistics graduate who started the Etymology Nerd blog, noted its apparent first appearance on Twitter as another word for homeless occurred in October 2008. Around 2020, the use of unhoused began growing exponentially, according to Google Trends. Today, in mainstream articles and conversations, it’s synonymous with – and for many people, preferable to – homeless. While governments don’t yet widely employ it, some grassroots groups and scholars use it exclusively.

Critics have derided the new word as clunky and unfamiliar, potentially the product of woke virtue signaling. But those who have adopted it say it’s for the same reasons OSL originally did: to lessen stigma and to highlight that those lacking permanent roofs over their heads may still have communities or physical spaces they consider home. And with the country currently in the midst of an intractable housing crisis, there’s another reason for the popularity of unhoused: the word’s root emphasizes that the problem is a structural one linked to a lack of affordable housing, not a personal weakness.

Unhoused is no neologism; it’s been around since the mid-16th century. The etymologist and linguistic consultant Jason Greenberg pointed out that Shakespeare used it to illustrate Othello’s love for Desdemona, though it had a slightly different meaning at the time:

Homeless is an old word too, with origins in old English, said Greenberg. But historically it has referred to a lack of social and emotional connections, rather than the absence of a physical residence. In the 1980s, however, largely due to deep cuts in federal housing and welfare programs, increasing numbers of people began finding themselves without a place to live. Those numbers grew from roughly 100,000 people in 1980 to 600,000 in 1987, and journalists and analysts needed a word to describe the new denizens. Around the mid-80s, homeless became the term of choice.

The popularity of unhoused could be tied to a similar shift in public life: the emergence of large tent communities in many big cities around the country. “I think I first heard [the word] maybe 10 years ago, when encampments became more prevalent,” said Maria Foscarinis, founder of the National Homelessness Law Center.

While homelessness in the US has risen only slightly over the past few years, the proportion of unsheltered people – that is, those who don’t utilize overnight shelters but instead sleep outside or in vehicles – and the number of tent encampments have significantly increased, making the overall problem much more visible. Correspondingly, housing prices in many of those same cities have steeply risen over the past decade. The use of unhoused is an effort to humanize those residents.

“It’s a powerful way to remind us that the issue is really a housing problem,” said Elizabeth Bowen, a professor of social work at the University of Buffalo. “I think that’s useful: there can be a tendency to think about homelessness in more individualistic ways, like it’s a person’s personal failing or the result of their life choices. When really the most important thing is that we just don’t have enough affordable housing in this country.”

Some advocates think the newer word doesn’t go far enough. “Homeless, houseless, unhoused: they’re abstract and kind of euphemisms. I prefer ‘housing-deprived’, but it’s a mouthful,” said Jonathan Russell, chief strategy and impact officer at Bay Area Community Services.

Still, asserted Mark Horvath, founder of the advocacy organization Invisible People and himself formerly unhoused, “most homeless people still say homeless.”

Intentional shifts in terminology might seem like a game of Whac-A-Mole – an ultimately unsuccessful effort to outrun a concept’s ugly implications. The Harvard professor Steven Pinker dubbed it the “euphemism treadmill”.

“What usually happens is, over time, a term that may have been neutral at some point becomes pejorative,” said Robin Queen, a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan. “And that’s usually when you find people finding new words for it.” In the past, for example, people lacking permanent residences were described as bums, hobos or transients; homeless itself was once considered a neutral, more palatable alternative.

Queen and other analysts agree that words and the thinking behind them can have real consequences, especially as the housing crisis becomes increasingly politicized. Conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Cicero Institute have become involved, describing homeless encampments as “hotbeds” of crime, violence and social disorder. They have been pushing back on the housing first model, which aims to end homelessness by quickly moving people into permanent housing paired with supportive services and has been widely successful. The Cicero Institute in particular has developed a coordinated campaign to promote model legislation that criminalizes homelessness. So far, legislatures in Texas and Missouri have successfully used Cicero’s template to ban public camping, and bills have been introduced in Kansas, Tennessee and several other states.

Writ large, what’s occurring is a struggle for the narrative. “People are frustrated, seeing homelessness grow,” explained Horvath. In response, he said, “There’s a huge amount of money on the right going to reinforce negative stereotypes that people hold onto regarding homelessness.”

It’s not nearly enough, but the term unhoused – giving a fresh name to a tired, infuriating topic – is one small strike in that battle over public opinion.