Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People

Continuity of Care, as defined in Rough Sleepers, describes a practice wherein care providers continually see patients to establish relationships with them. For the Street Team and the health care providers in the Health Care for the Homeless Program, this practice is critical to successful care. Continuity of care contrasts with standardized health care across the nation—for the Street Team and its patients, it’s crucial that each person see the same set of providers to establish the trust, compassion, and understanding so critical to successful care for this population.

Kidder and the Street Team use the terms “homeless” and “homelessness” in contrast to “unhoused” and “houseless,” which are presently common terms to refer to people who do not have consistent shelter. “Homeless” and “homelessness” refer to a variety of circumstances. People without shelter aren’t always chronically “homeless.” Sometimes the term refers to people who might not sleep in the streets but sleep on couches or in shelters. Because this term is so ambiguous, the statistics that represent the many people in this category might not always capture them.

Some activists advocate for using “houseless” and “unhoused” instead of “homeless”: “The term ‘homeless’ makes the spaces [unhoused people] do call home sound illegitimate, when home represents far more than a location.