Also written: unhoused, homeless, houseless, homeless person, people experiencing homelessness, persons experiencing homelessness
| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| SumOfUs | 2016 | Use |
| SumOfUs | 2016 | Avoid |
| SumOfUs | 2016 | Use |
| Diversity Style Guide | 2023 | Use with care |
“homeless person [used] / the homeless [avoided] / transient [avoided]”
SumOfUs's 2016 Housing/Space table approves 'homeless person' (identity-first, singular, person-centered) and flags 'the homeless' (definite-article aggregation) and 'transient' as avoided terms. No mention of 'unhoused' or 'houseless' — neither had entered mainstream progressive style discourse yet.
“Consider whether terms and phrasing are crass, inaccurate, or may reinforce stigma, implying criminalization or invoking fear (bum, indigent, vagrant, beggar) and take the time to re-word or frame the issue with adequate context to go against those patterns.”
SumOfUs names four stigmatizing or criminalizing terms as avoided: bum, indigent, vagrant, beggar. The guidance is framed as anti-criminalization (not only politeness) — these words carry legal and enforcement connotations and cue readers to treat people experiencing homelessness as a public-order problem rather than a policy failure.
“persons experiencing homelessness or illness”
The Economy section of the same guide lists 'persons experiencing homelessness' as an approved term — a person-first construction that sits alongside the Housing section's 'homeless person' (identity-first). The guide does not reconcile the two. Reads as an in-progress transition: the 2016 progressive consensus hadn't yet picked between person-first and identity-first wordings, and the guide issued both.
“An individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. Some people prefer the term unhoused. When possible, ask which term people prefer. Use person-first language: people experiencing homelessness; avoid homeless people or the homeless.”
DSG treats 'homeless' and 'unhoused' as co-equal options with no ranked default, and instructs self-ID deferral — ask which term people prefer. On construction it takes a firmer position than SumOfUs: **person-first required** ('people experiencing homelessness'), **identity-first explicitly to avoid** ('homeless people,' 'the homeless'). This flips SumOfUs's 2016 Housing-section approval of 'homeless person' — a clear 2016→2023 migration in progressive style.
Sources that name this term by pointing at another guide, without issuing their own ruling.
TJA does not author its own guidance on the term. Lists the Homelessness Beat Reporters Collective's guide under external style references. Schema stress-point (see extraction notes): no v0.2 field for this cleanly — captured here as a proposed `external_references[]` block for v0.3.
Sources that supply a framework relevant to this term without defining the term themselves.
NCDJ formally retired its person-first default in 2021 in favor of 'ask case-by-case.' Scoped to disability, but methodologically the same move DSG applies to unhoused/homeless. Named here as framing, not as a guidance entry.
APA's 2nd ed. Inclusive Language Guide articulates the person-first / identity-first distinction. Not term-specific but provides the vocabulary for talking about this choice.
Index entry for Kapitan's essay 'On Person-First Language.' Argues that mechanical person-first constructions can fail the person. Not term-specific. Full essay pending Phase 2 acquisition.
The homeless/unhoused cluster is smaller and tighter than race/ethnicity clusters like Latinx. Only two sources in the current corpus issue direct guidance — SumOfUs (2016) and Diversity Style Guide (2023) — and between them they show something the Latinx entry couldn’t: a clean time-capsule of how progressive style has migrated, across seven years, on a term where the principles were settled but the wording wasn’t.
The 2016 → 2023 migration has two moves:
New vocabulary: “Unhoused” enters the recommended set. SumOfUs (2016) doesn’t mention it; DSG (2023) names it as a term “some people prefer” and gives it co-equal status with “homeless.” No corpus source ranks one above the other; both defer to self-ID.
Firmer grammar: The approved construction shifts from identity-first to person-first. SumOfUs’s Housing section approved “homeless person.” DSG explicitly writes “avoid homeless people or the homeless” and prescribes “people experiencing homelessness.” What SumOfUs allowed, DSG rules out. The within-guide inconsistency inside SumOfUs itself — its Economy section already used “persons experiencing homelessness” while its Housing section approved “homeless person” — reads in hindsight as the transition caught mid-step.
Where the guides agree:
The methodological context matters. Three sources in the corpus — NCDJ (2021), APA (2023), Radical Copyeditor (2017) — work out the person-first vs. identity-first framework on the ground of disability, not homelessness. NCDJ’s 2021 move to retire its person-first default in favor of “ask” is methodologically the same move DSG applies to this term two years later. Practitioners arriving at this entry with a disability-style-guide instinct will find that DSG takes a firmer pro-person-first position than NCDJ does on disability. The two guides have different underlying communities — people with disabilities have pushed for identity-first reclamation (the Deaf community, autistic communities), while “the homeless” (definite-article identity-first) has no comparable reclamation constituency. Person-first here is not mechanically applied; it reflects community posture.
Sparse-corpus caveat. This term has only two direct-guidance sources in our current archive. The Homelessness Beat Reporters Collective’s reporting guide (referenced by TJA) is the obvious next acquisition; national homelessness advocacy orgs (National Alliance to End Homelessness, National Coalition for the Homeless) may also publish style guidance. Update this entry in Phase 2 once those are in hand.
No semantically-distinct related terms in scope. “Unhoused,” “houseless,” “homeless person,” and “people experiencing homelessness” are all handled inside this entry as aliases or construction variants, not as separate files. Avoided terms (bum, indigent, vagrant, beggar, transient, “the homeless”) are documented within this entry’s guidance blocks rather than as standalone entries — they’re terms to reject, not terms to recommend.
“Homeless” as the English-language default dates to the 19th century and became the mainstream U.S. term after the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act codified “lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence” as the federal definition in 1987. “Unhoused” was in limited circulation earlier but gained mainstream progressive traction during the 2017–2022 window, particularly in West Coast advocacy writing, as part of a broader rejection of definite-article identity constructions (“the homeless,” “the poor,” “the disabled”). The 2016 SumOfUs guide predates this shift; the 2023 DSG entry reflects it. Neither term has displaced the other — most U.S. policy, legal, and statistical writing still uses “homeless” because that is the language of the McKinney-Vento Act.