The Taxonomy of Homelessness: an excerpt from "Rough Sleepers"

For anyone who is interested in the issues surrounding homelessness, I recommend Tracy Kidder's book Rough Sleepers, published in 2023 by Random House.  It details Dr. Jim O'Connell's journey to bring healing to homeless people in Boston, and is full of heartbreaking stories, uplifting experiences, and hard-core data in equal measure.  I found the vocabulary they established for speaking about the status of their patients to be very helpful:  

"Homelessness had a complex taxonomy.  It included families and also many lone individuals, generally divided into four categories.  There were the "hidden," such as the Street Team patient who slept in a rented storage locker.  The "transitional," by far the most numerous, fell into homelessness only briefly, while the "episodic" did so a few times a year.  A smaller number--about 10 percent in 2018--belonged to the "chronic" category, living in constant or near-constant homelessness.  That chronic group had two main subgroups--those who spent most of their nights in homeless shelters and those who slept rough, on pavement and park benches, in doorways, ATM parlors, tents on the outskirts of towns."  pg 55-56

Image of my friend Frankie C, taken by another friend, Bret Bahe
Contact Bret through his Instagram account @bb_snaps_photography/