I find it useful that terms have meaning and one can distinguish between what belongs to it and what doesn't.
A pork steak is a piece of meat taken from a pig. Once it's made of beans or some mushroom it may still be tasty (and I love good veggie food), but it's not a pork steak.
Similarly, the term "homeless" also has a certain meaning, and using it for something else muddies communication waters. And at worst, it makes the fight against actual homelessness harder: Next time some tax dollar is planned to be used for relief, somebody will point to those cases and say "well some homeless enjoy the sunrise and love the outdoors and have two suits in locker, and ain't none of my tax dollars go to that!!"
If you want to call that "gatekeeping", then sure. What's the purpose of your comment then? Gatekeeping me and telling me I should not call out the misuse of the term?
Common meaning is the protocol prerequisite for understanding and very often undervalued.
Words bring vibrations? Perhaps I don’t know, but they bring very strong meaning very often and in most languages also, even though English being famous for the same word meaning different things in different contexts, the conveyed meaning itself is still very important.
And homeless implies less of something which can be a moral choice also, but still there’s the ‘less’ which is not there when your bank account has enough for other options. The mental less in homelessness is bitter and very often related to certain major calamity.
Gatekeeping words would be important if it were respected. Unfortunately it is not, when the context doesn’t favor a specific flavour of the outcome.
Example in France, “homeless” is called SDF, and it means “no home” (no fixed address to receive mail, although shelters allow mail) but doesn’t mean “no roof”. And that was done to include women, because women were practically not represented on the street, as they often have someone who can host them, even if they cannot call it home. There is no word (except derogatory like “Claudo”, or workarounds like “on the street”) to describe the homelessness that men suffer.
Now, since women represent 16% SDF, but most of them are hosted, they do not tend to die during winters. They do not tend to face street violence. They do not match those stats. Unfortunately, since they still represent 16% of SDF, they also get reserved budgets in addition to the budgets which are destined to homelessness in general (and which are themselves already allocated with a slant towards the female gender - the whole thing is absolutely despicable).
So, since words are perverted for political goals precisely in this area, I’d rather we let history written by the writers, with their own appreciation of the words’ meaning. The usual side will win again, but when there is an odd article not written in “the correct way”, let it live.
