How to mean what you say but never mention what you mean

I’d never before heard Miami-Dade’s forceful and direct county commission Chairman Oliver Gilbert III at a loss for words, but last week he was nonplused – and for good reason. Once he sorted out what was going on, though, he did the right thing.

Mr. Gilbert stumbled over the same mind-bending issue that had flummoxed me earlier, proposed legislation that would make it policy to never again say “homeless” but to change by a single commission vote all county written and spoken references to “unhoused.”

The legislation by Commissioner Kionne McGhee before the Chairman’s Policy Council perplexed the chairman, and he asked for some clarification, about things like why the county would want to legislate on the language people use every day and what the impact would be.

Mr. Gilbert, the only county commissioner also serving on the 27-member Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, which is based in county hall where the meeting was being held, wanted to ask Mr. McGhee about his legislation but he wasn’t there to ask. He also wanted to hear from trust leaders about this unexpected new branding effort spawned by the trust.

“We’re getting the Unhoused Trust, and so because I’m on the executive committee of what I guess will soon become the Unhoused Trust, which is odd, but my curiosity is I know that I have like T-shirts and hats and stuff that say Homeless Trust. How much is this going to cost, the branding? Because this is a branding item, essentially. How much is this going to cost?” he asked trust Executive Director Victoria Mallette. 

“We hadn’t contemplated the rebranding as part of this change, references to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness as being unhoused. We could certainly make that change, but we hadn’t contemplated rebranding the body.”

In other words, everyone else would be told in legislation never to say or write homeless but the name of the instigator, the Homeless Trust, would be exempt.

“So what will we do?” asked Mr. Gilbert. “I don’t understand this thing.”

He wasn’t alone.

“So is it for just using the term ‘unhoused’ instead of ‘homeless’ when referring to except for in the name?” asked Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to general laughter.

“That is my understanding,” Ms. Mallette responded, showing that at least one person thought she understood what was going on.

“I’m probably not going to be supportive of that, but the maker of the item isn’t here,” Mr. Gilbert said. “So I’m comfortable moving it forward, but I don’t understand. Cosmetically we all want to say unhoused instead of homeless but we are going to leave the Homeless Trust the same. That just doesn’t – I don’t understand that.”

Ms. Mallette tried unsuccessfully to clear it all up.

“One point of clarification,” she said. “I do think it’s important that we shed some light on unhoused individuals, but I think it’s also important to remember that people in shelters are also considered homeless in the eyes of United States Housing and Urban Development, so both unsheltered and sheltered are both considered homeless. I just don’t want to lose the fact that homelessness extends beyond just those who we see on the street.”

Did that clear it up for you? It left me more confused than the legislation itself, which says that if people on the streets have a pet or a memento of their lives or a tradition they have a home in that, so they are not homeless, just unhoused.

The more it was explained, the less clear it became.

But Mr. Gilbert seemed, haltingly, to grasp what was going on.

“I understand, it’s – why this is – yeah, let’s just defer this until the next meeting.” And it was unanimous – semantics and the meanings of words and the bending of meanings to change minds will be coming back once again before commissioners to twist language into government-think.

As someone asked me, “Don’t they have anything better to do with their time and money?”