Reply #30: I don't think so.

[Withywindle]

Are we working with wildly different definitions of homelessness here? Sounds like it.

I'm a renter. Never owned a house. I'm not homeless. I spent pretty much all of my 20s sharing apartments with an ever-changing cast of roommates. We weren't homeless.

A home, to me, is a safe place to sleep, shelter from the elements, a place for your stuff (thanks, George Carlin), a place to shower and eat and relax and escape from the outside world a little bit, a place to cook and plug in your appliances, with SOME security and concept of "permanance" even if that's just a renter's lease or a family tie. I think if you have that, you can certainly still be poor or financially insecure or stressed out or just scraping by, but you're not homeless (You might be painfully conscious of how close to it you are, but still...you're not there yet.)