"If there's one malady that affects rich men of certain age, beyond infidelity and lower back pain, then surely it's the propensity to feel like they need to play up the many hardships they've endured to make it to this point. After all, people won't respect you unless they believe you can identify with the plight of the common man! So what if you're an Oscar-winning actor; people need to believe that you've accumulated some serious grit."
"Calling yourself "homeless" is practically a rich white male right of passage, whether it's Mike Pence invoking the term while simultaneously staying at a vacation villa in the Virgin Islands, or Ed Sheeran having been "homeless" while staying for six weeks at the L.A. home of Jamie Foxx. Meanwhile in reality, actual homelessness in the U.S. surged to record highs in 2024, with a point-in-time count conducted in January registering more than 770,000 people experiencing homelessness, an 18% jump from the same point-in-time count in 2023."
Privileged men sometimes exaggerate transient living situations by calling themselves "homeless," framing temporary hotel or Airbnb stays as severe deprivation. High-profile examples include public figures who describe non-ownership as equivalent to homelessness while actually living in paid accommodations. Such rhetoric contrasts sharply with the U.S. homelessness surge in 2024, when a January point-in-time count recorded over 770,000 people experiencing homelessness, an 18% increase from 2023. The conflation of celebrity inconvenience with genuine housing insecurity obscures systemic causes and diverts attention from urgent needs and policy responses for people without stable shelter.
Read at Jezebel
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