van is a home if you have your stuff in it, live in it, and enjoy moving around, this does not make you homeless, sorry. is a home on wheels and can be very comfortable should you decide so.
I commented instead of downvoting. However, to speculate, you implied a person isn't homeless if they have a van. You were responding to a comment containing:
> I was technically "homeless"/vanliving
Wherein they were relating their experience and recognized that they were vanliving (living in their van as their home) and even quoted their use of homeless, calling themselves "technically" so.
Even someone living in a tent or sleeping on the ground, if they keep returning to a site could say that site was their home. Some say the world is their home or that the region they stay in is. They would still be very clearly considered homeless despite having a "home".
As I understand it, it is a gray area whether vanliving is legal. You are allowed to park a vehicle but the owner doesn't have unlimited right to leave the van in one spot and live there. Even living in a van on your own land can be against code. People sleeping rough generally have no recognized right to sleep where they do. They are frequently moved and more often harassed. The situation is similar for those living in a van.
Anyway, that aside and trying to speculate about your downvote(s?), the context was that you started a language specificity discussion with someone who appeared to be unsure about the right words and hesitant to call themselves homeless. There were plenty of places on this thread to have that discussion but this doesn't seem an appropriate spot to me. I don't know whether that poster even knows you responded but if they do, I could see your response causing some difficult thoughts and/or emotions.
I doubt you intended harm but it can be helpful to consider the context to minimize the risk of harm or even just better understand the diverse manners in which your comments could be received. Hope you enjoy commenting here and learn from it and the comments of others.
Thank you for taking time to write this, appreciated - and it is a beautiful writing, I would say.
Indeed, I intended no harm, but having spent time on desolate beaches, retreats and similar, I could definitely disambiguate between living in a tent, in the forest, like even doing some coding from there, and being homeless. My comments joined the... seemingly overall uproar against author's choice to call his experience homelessness.
But you make a valid point reg. how many ways a comment can be interpreted.
My point was that precisely, and with my other comment - that homelessness is not a state you typically get to by choice. It is social status more or less. Unless the choice is to become sannyasa or traveling Buddhist monk and renounce the material world, which is not op's story, really. Given my previous experienced living in the tent in a forest for... months, well I can definitely say is not the same as being homeless. I have also met refugees (mostly levantines in Europe) who are much more homeless even when being crammed together in "homes" dozens at a time. They have interesting perspective of what is home, and having the world for your home is not always a good thing to say.
I completely agree that living in a tent can be lovely and some of my life's favorite moments include tent living (e.g. in the temperate rain forest of Olympic National Park) and moving every day.
I even mostly agree with the overall uproar. It feels like bending the term pretty hard for the author to claim homelessness. The further point that there may be moral hazard in that use seems reasonable.
I like your point about homelessness more or less being a social status. I think it adds insight and I have enjoyed that this whole discussion (ours and other bits in the context) has really stimulated me to more deeply examine what homeless means.
Your point about even having a standard shelter to live in (house seemed implied but isn't important) not wiping away homelessness is excellently instructive. I certainly know people I consider homeless who have assigned housing. Considering the counsel housing system in the U.K. seems like it might start to step to the other side of that line on the other hand, shifting the discussion to other dimensions of a person's needs and "enfranchisement".
Let me reiterate my gratitude for sharing your thoughts and even more for getting to a discussion that feels more like peace and curiosity.
