The Unhoused: America’s Refugees

What is a refugee? There are various legal, sociological, and demographic definitions of “refugee” which all have validity. Simply put, refugees are people who have been displaced from their normal living situation without any durable solution to their plight. As Hannah Arendt, the renowned expert on human rights stated so perceptively, a refugee is someone who has been deprived “of their place in the world.”

Housing is a human right. We shouldn’t use the term “homeless,” but rather “unhoused.” The label of “homeless” has derogatory connotations. It implies that one is “less than,” and it undermines self-esteem and progressive change. The use of the term “unhoused,” instead, has a profound personal impact upon those in insecure housing situations. It implies that there is a moral and social assumption that everyone should be housed in the first place.

Who are unhoused people? We all have various ideas of who is an unhoused person and how they became unhoused. These are based on what we see in the media, stories from friends and family, or what we see in the street. There simply is no such thing as the “typical” unhoused person. No one is completely safe from becoming unhoused and every community has unhoused people. An unhoused person is also someone who has been deprived “of their place in the world.”

Poverty is the main source of being unhoused, bringing despair, grinding people down to no other alternative in their living situation. Poverty is caused by economic systems that deny their benefits to large portions of society. The personal circumstances are many. Some are veterans who on returning from deployment suffer from PTSD and other mental problems who simply cannot cope with day to day stress. They lose their employment, destroy the fabric of their families, turn to alcohol, drugs, and/or other dangerous activities in an attempt to self-medicate and alleviate their pain and suffering. On any given day, more than 165 Montana veterans are unhoused, and over 13,400 Montana veterans live in homes with one or more major problem of quality, crowding, or cost.

Domestic abuse, family breakup, and family violence merge to create physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that culminates in a crisis of being unhoused. Over 20% of unhoused youth end up being victims of human trafficking, and 17% are sex trafficked. Many unhoused youth, especially, but not only, girls are engaged in “survival sex” to meet basic needs such as food and housing. Over 40% of sex trafficked youth were approached by a sexual predator on their very first night of being unhoused. Young people who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual are much more likely to become unhoused, as homophobia is still tolerated in many families, schools, and communities.

Public school data has shown that over 4,700 public school students in Montana were unhoused over the course of the school year, with 10% unsheltered and alone, over 300 in shelters, nearly 400 living in hotels or motels and over 3,000 doubled up living with relatives or friends. This instability of being unhoused clearly has an impact on academic performance, social, and mental well-being leading to depression and possible suicide.

The opioid epidemic is another factor in the creation of being unhoused. Some people become addicted through medical issues and then through their addiction slide into joblessness, poverty, family breakup, and being unhoused. Others become addicted on the streets after losing their homes.

Mental illness is another source of being unhoused. On any given day in the U.S. over 250,000 mentally ill people and over 140,000 seriously mentally ill people are unhoused, with over 31% of them living on the street. Lack of treatment is the number one cause of being unhoused among the mentally ill. Nearly 28% of mentally ill unhoused people state they use some food from garbage cans and 8% state they use garbage cans as their primary source of food.

With no home, people spend the day looking for a hot meal, a place to rest, somewhere to go to the bathroom with dignity, and a quiet, hopefully dry, place to sleep. Getting a drink of water can be challenging. And getting a job is nearly impossible with no permanent address, no clean clothing, no bathing, no privacy, and no personal self-esteem. Your mental and physical health deteriorates, and the stress causes you to become desperate, and your decisions become increasingly irrational. In short, being unhoused causes mental illness, drug abuse, and violent behavior.

Nearly everyone is simply one accident, medical crisis, or economic down-turn away from forces that might change your circumstances into being unhoused. The average person in the U.S. will be on the streets within eight weeks of losing employment or other income. If this happens people are cast adrift on the edges of society, scared, bitter, angry, demoralized, and alienated from normal everyday life. They feel as if their lives are worthless and getting nowhere.

Being unhoused cannot be solved at the federal or state level, it must be solved by each community, using public and private resources. Federal and state funds can be a great help. However, we need to address being unhoused with the same care and compassion we are expressing in our efforts to help the refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, with an outpouring of community support and resources. We need to show the same sensitivity, care, and empathy to produce real world answers which restore the dignity of these people who are living on the street, or in shelters, or couch surfing with relatives and friends.