How (Not) to Write About Homelessness 2

Rule #2: Don't disparage one group to uplift another

This is part 2 of an ongoing series that will drop sporadically rather than consecutively. These tips are things that I’ve learned from other amazing writers and advocates, and from failing spectacularly myself.

Previous entries:

How (Not) to Write about Homelessness

How we write about homelessness matters—and more than ever we need writers getting it right.

Rule #2: Don’t disparage one segment of the population to differentiate them from another.

This is one that I see the most often from well-meaning writers, speaking to an inherent tension in homelessness work. The stereotype of who an unhoused person is (a single, jobless adult male, who uses drugs and/or has a severe mental illness) is not representative of the majority. Excellent research has been done to highlight the segments of the population who don’t meet this, and to show that the intersections of mental health and substance use are more complex than we make them.

It’s an important part of narrative change to debunk these stereotypes as normative, and one of the ways we do that is by offering counter-examples. Nonetheless, I can’t say this enough: even if an unhoused person has a severe mental illness, substance use disorder, and (heaven forbid!) a bad attitude—they are still worthy of love, respect, housing, and support.

I’m not here for half-measures, or organizations who pick and choose who the “good ones” are. And a lot of good organizations probably agree… but their messaging doesn’t always. Far too often, in trying to present counter-examples, they uphold the negative view of those who fit the stereotype.

As with last time, here are four ways to say roughy the same things, moving worse to better:

(1) Stacy isn’t like others who are homeless. She’s not an alcoholic, addict, or mentally ill. She’s a working mother, like you or me, who just fell behind on her bills.

(2) Stacy doesn’t fit the common stereotype of homelessness. She doesn’t struggle with substances or mental illness. She’s just a working mother who fell behind on her bills.

(3) Stacy is a working mother who fell behind on her bills. She serves as a reminder that not all homelessness matches the stereotype. But all unhoused people share a need for support and care.

Notice that the shift from (1) to (2) is mainly just language choice. The judgmental, outdated language is gone… but the sentiment is still the same. Just because we avoid words like “homeless” or “junkie” doesn’t mean our sentiments don’t still communicate judgment and malice. Even in (2), the framing suggests that Stacy is better and more deserving than the stereotype.

In (3), we’ve moved Stacy’s distinctives (that she’s a working mother who fell behind) to simple descriptors of her, rather than as part of the comparison. We still acknowledge in the next sentence that this is different than the stereotype, but we don’t use comparative language that communicates judgment. And lastly, we add a sentence to go out of our way to communicate that regardless of the differences, everyone is worth of support.

In humanizing the issue for some, we too often perpetuate the fear and malice toward others. We must figure out a way to differentiate without ranking—to sort folks by attributes but not by deservedness.

Examples:

Both negative and positive examples come from books on the intersection of faith and homelessness. Both are passages intending to show the dissonance between stereotypes about homelessness and the realities. The first, Welcome Homeless by Alan Graham, misses the mark:

[Danny] wasn’t trained for what was about to happen on the streets. He wasn’t trained to deal with what he found when he turned the corner into an alleyway lined with repulsive junkies, prostitutes, and rats.

Unable to empathize or imagine this new lifestyle, he thought, “My God, I’m not like these people. I am not lazy. I just wanna find some work. This will pass.” But the recovered addict in him was particularly susceptible after the sudden profound catastrophic loss of family and it didn’t take long for him to assimilate. He quickly discovered that that a lot of these people weren’t addicts when they became homeless. A lot of these people weren’t alcoholics when their wives left. A lot of these people weren’t prostitutes before they were raped. What Danny discovered was that more than 70% weren’t addicts until after they had been on the streets for about 4 to 6 months.

When I first read this, the line "an alleyway lined with repulsive junkies, prostitutes, and rats” really alarmed me. I understood that Alan was trying to put us in the mind of Danny, not his own—and yet the word choice still seemed unnecessary.

And while the passage then goes on to explain that the substance use disorders and prostitution he witnessed are correlated with trauma, (in an overly simplistic way), it doesn’t help us empathize more. As the story goes, Danny sees people that he deems “repulsive”, but then “assimilates” to them. Our brains fill in the gap, and we now see Danny as “repulsive,” even if just to himself.

A generous reading might say that Danny sees more humanity in those he once saw as repulsive because he is now one of them… but the text doesn’t say that. As a reader who loves unhoused people, I’m having to make that leap myself. If I were a reader who already viewed unhoused people as “repulsive junkies and prostitutes”, would these paragraphs change my mind?

By trying to differentiate Danny, the story hurls insult at an entire group of unhoused people who have a substance use disorder or engage in sex work… and then casts Danny among them. It’s a long time before Danny’s redemption occurs in the chapter, and not before a continuance of Danny’s fall into misery. Even if, by the end, we get to a cathartic redemption story for Danny, how many have we left behind still bearing harmful labels?

Let’s look at a better way.

I’m always reaching for Praying with Our Feet by Lindsey Krinks when I need to be reminded how to write about homelessness. In this excerpt, Lindsey is finishing one story about Cathy and her two year-old daughter Lily, before transitioning to a story about Kentucky, an older Vietnam vet.

Both stories are complex narratives that she imbues with affection and understanding. But notice how deftly she acknowledges the stereotyping issue—both its subversion and its realization:

When the general public pictures someone on the streets, they imagine a shabby older man, perhaps a veteran with PTSD, pushing a cart. Lily was as far away from the stereotype as one could get—sober, beaming, innocent. Yet the fastest growing demographic experiencing homelessness, both in Tennessee and across the nation, was not self-medicating vets. It was families with children.

And then there was Kentucky: the stereotypical homeless guy; the hippie-loving, train-hopping, bandana-wearing, PTSD-riddled Vietnam vet who pushed a shopping cart around East Nashville, and slept on church stoops. Kentucky’s buggy held a single crutch and several plastic bags with piss-yellow antiseptic mouthwash that he drank to drown his trauma, his shame. Mouthwash was, after all, cheaper than liquor and you could buy it without an ID.

The message is clear in how Lindsey writes: homelessness doesn’t always look like the stereotype—but even when it does, they too are loved. She doesn’t skip over his substance use disorder, even painting it miserably by how she describes the color of the mouthwash, allowing for the visceral response the reader would have at the idea of drinking it. Nothing is sugarcoated. And yet, no loaded nouns like “addict” or “junkie” appear. The harms and horrors of the alcohol are real, but Kentucky’s humanity remains unmarred in Lindsey’s heart and in her pen.

Cathy & Lily are interesting to compare with Kentucky not because they have different levels of worth, but because they challenge or affirm our engrained stereotypes in interesting ways. I think Alan would likely agree, but as I said before—how we write matters not only because of what it can reveal, but what it can create. What we write and say about homelessness either perpetuates stereotypes or it confronts them, even when we’re not naming them.

Let’s be sure that the ways we write and talk about homelessness stand up to this nuance: Homelessness affects many different types of people, not falling neatly into the media and political narrative, and to whomever it occurs our response should be compassion, understanding, and resourcing. Anything less is utterly beneath us.

---

These posts will always be free.

But the rest of my work—traveling to speak and lead workshops, creating content, advocacy and direct aid—is enabled and expanded by your support. Consider becoming a Paid subscriber to enhance my reach.