From the Irony in Glass Houses Dept....

[Ben]

So someone help me figure this out. We've got "Homeless Advocates" complaining about terminology used to describe homeless people, but if you're calling yourself a "Homeless Advocate" aren't you advocating homelessness???

I think we should go back to calling them hobos. Hobos are cool. I remember when I was in scouts, we'd do weekend camps near a place called "Hobo Jungle." Some of  us would always go off and visit the hobos -- they had a lot of neat stories. Well, except for the one that asked me if I'd ever been to a Turkish bath......

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http://www.wcjb.com/news.asp?id=13025

The Gainesville City Commission voted unanimously Monday to change the wording and composition of a key redevelopment document homeless advocates have complained comes across as demeaning.

The document, a community redevelopment plan drafted five years ago, appeared on the commission's July 25 agenda in reference to public calls for increased financial support of the homeless community.

The sentence drawing the most ire read "Finally, one of the often-mentioned impediments to redevelopment in the downtown business district has been the vagrant and transient population." The homeless advocates took specific issue with the words "vagrant" and "transient."

"It was similar to when the Nazis were calling the Jews 'vermin'. I don't think they were right to refer to these people as transients," said Bob Ellenberg, one of the advocates present at Monday's commission meeting. "Many of them have been in this town for a long time, some are home-grown here in Gainesville, and vagrants...I'm not sure that definition (applies) to a lot of these people."

Leading the call to amend the document was Gainesville City Commissioner Jack Donovan, who has emerged as especially outspoken on homeless issues.

"It gives us really an opportunity maybe a few years down the road to say, 'well, what we really have is two problems'," Donovan said. "They interrelate, they affect each other, but they don't cause each other - the problems of blight in the downtown and problems of plight for our lower income people."

The commission's decision to amend the document will be forwarded to the Downtown Redevelopment Advisory Board, where the final changes will be made.

[Strings]

"Oh... we're also going to call a shovel an 'earth moving device', as the term 'spade' has racist connotations"...

 Sheesh... this is just rediculus...

[Standing Wolf]

In exactly one short word familiar to one and all: bums.

[Sindawe]

Well, not always Standing Wolf.  If the person is not homeless by choice but by circumstance beyond their control, the term "bum" really would not apply IMHO. If one remains homless AND jobless by choice, then they could properly be called a bum.

Transient MAY be applicable, if the person in question move from place to place, only residing in one location for a brief duration.

I will concur, vagrant = bum though.

[Werewolf]

A large quantity of biologically manufactured, odiferous, hot, recycled solid waste  is still:

A BIG STEAMING PILE OF *expletive deleted*it!

All this BS about words.... Arrrrrgggghhhh!

PC - will ultimately be the root cause of the fall of the USA.

GAWD - why can't people focus on what's important instead of all the nit-picky BS. Don't they have anything better to do....

[griz]

Boortz calls them "urban outdoorsman".

Whatever the term, it can never be permantly acceptable. The problem is what the term represents, not the particular word being used.

[The Rabbi]

Hmm, what else could we call them?

How about
-The Downwardly Mobile
-NikNiks (No Income, No Kids)
-The Rentless
-the Open-Homers

[TarpleyG]

"It was similar to when the Nazis were calling the Jews 'vermin'. I don't think they were right to refer to these people as transients," said Bob Ellenberg, one of the advocates present at Monday's commission meeting. "Many of them have been in this town for a long time, some are home-grown here in Gainesville, and vagrants...I'm not sure that definition (applies) to a lot of these people."

Methinks Mr. Ellenberg needs to by a freakin' dictionary.  What a moron!

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ver·min (vûrmn)
n. pl. vermin

   1. Various small animals or insects, such as rats or cockroaches, that are destructive, annoying, or injurious to health.
   2. Animals that prey on game, such as foxes or weasels.
   3.
        1. A person considered loathsome or highly offensive.
         2. Such people considered as a group.

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tran·si·ent (trnz-nt, -zhnt, -shnt)
adj.

   1. Passing with time; transitory: the transient beauty of youth (Lydia M. Child).
   2. Remaining in a place only a brief time: transient laborers.
   3. Physics. Decaying with time, especially as a simple exponential function of time.

n.

   1. One that is transient, especially a hotel guest or boarder who stays for only a brief time.
   2. Physics. A transient phenomenon or property, especially a transient electric current.

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va·grant   Audio pronunciation of "vagrant" ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (vgrnt)
n.

   1. One who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood.
   2. A wanderer; a rover.
   3. One who lives on the streets and constitutes a public nuisance.

adj.

   1. Wandering from place to place and lacking any means of support.
   2. Wayward; unrestrained: a vagrant impulse.
   3. Moving in a random fashion; not fixed in place: Thanks to a vagrant current of the Gulf Stream, a stretch of the Kola coast is free of ice year round (Jack Beatty).

[grampster]

The definition of Vagrant furnished by Tarpley pretty much covers Bum.

So we have  two reasonable definitions:  vagrants and dispossesed mentally ill people.  Pretty much covers it.

[brimic]

I was homeless once, for about a week.
It was a situational homelessness, I had signed a lease on a house with a bunch of friends for the following year in college. There was a hitch however the dorms that I resided in closed 2 weeks before the house was ready to be moved in to. It wasn't much of a matter to the other guys, as they went home to their parents' places for most of the summer anyhow. I stayed in town because I was taking a few summer courses and worked on a golf course. I slept in my car, showered in the locker room of the golf course I worked at, and spent most of my free time at  and ate my meals at taverns. It wasn't very difficult to do.

That being said...
If a person takes handouts and sleeps on a street due to alcoholism, mental instability, or just pure laziness, they are a bum.