Home Sweet House

           In the essay, “Houselessness and Homelessness” by Jim Burklo, he discusses the difference of being in the situation of being “houseless” and being “homeless.” Unlike our common conception of homelessness, that is when a person does not have a place of dwelling; Burklo examines this to be a condition of “…people [not being] entrenched in their community, [al]though they may have a fine place to live.” On the other hand, houselessness is our “normal” conception of the term, and is the condition used to describe people who do not have homes. He argues this difference by stating that people who do not have a designated place to live understand the environment they live in whereas people who do have a home may not be in any way connected to the environment that they live in or even in their own community (Burklo).

In an examination of downtown, I see that many people portray this conception of houselessness and homelessness. But first, however, I would like to speak about my own neighborhood as a point of comparison. Here, the community is both entrenched with one another and the environment around us. We interact in positive ways with the nature around (like feeding the horses that was until we were told that that was not allowed) and we all like to maintain a friendly, familial kind of neighborhood. We socialize, we throw parties, we get together during holidays, and we take care of each other’s houses when someone goes on vacation.

In stark contrast, however, downtown feels nowhere like my neighborhood. I sense a detachment within the streets of downtown. There isn’t really something that helps to keep a connection between the people. Yes, there are places for families and friends to get together. There are places all around downtown and in the casino district such as the river, Century Riverside, Circus Circus, and so many other locations, but that doesn’t always mean that the people who live in the area are really connected to the people who come to have fun downtown. It pulls the community in, but there still lacks the ability to keep the people united with the culture of downtown. I think I have come to a conclusion, now, that downtown is almost a place the city of Reno visits rather than what the community it also is and this creates a sense of homelessness within Reno; we are not connected to the environment/ culture around us.

People who are “homeless” rather now in the context of this new definition, they are “houseless,” they appear to know a lot more about where they live. They know the ins and outs of downtown in order to get by; they know the appropriate places to go to sleep; they know the appropriate places to find food and water. They may not have a house, but downtown Reno is there home. The environment is a map they know by heart, but do we? We’re not as connected as it would seem.