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What does home truly mean to you?
Last week I went on a Spring Break trip to Chicago through a scholarship program I’m in.
During this time we learned about the housing crisis in Chicago by volunteering at homeless shelters, food depositories, and sitting in on panels with people who are in the housing industry in Chicago.
But before this whole trip happened, I learned some incredibly valuable information from one of the trip advisers that really shifted how I thought about “homelessness”.
Home is Subjective.
This was really eye opening for me.
Just because someone doesn’t have a house doesn’t mean they don’t have home. Home could be anything.
Home could mean you’re around people that you love. Home could mean you have a special object with you that is sacred to you. Heck, home could be yourself.
We tend to mix being homeless with not having a physical house to live in and that comes from a place of privilege.
So it’s important to use the term houseless instead of homeless to describe these people because you can’t assume what their home is and go as far as to say that they don’t have one.
