Homelessness is more common than you think.
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Today's story takes us to the Ocean State, where Bravo filmed the first season of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island. We're at a masquerade ball, being thrown by Real Housewife Liz McGraw at the luxurious Newport Mansion. Each of the ladies must unmask and reveal a vulnerable truth about themselves. Fellow housewife Alicia Carmody shares that as a child, she and her mother had to move in with Alicia's grandparents.
My life was not easy. From what I remember, my father left us homeless.
Liz, a friend of Alicia's for decades, took issue with that.
You were never homeless. No, he did. He sold my house. He left. He took my home as a child.
To Liz, this didn't look like the version of homelessness she'd seen up until that point.
He sold my house. We had to move back with my grandmother.
I will never hear you say you were homeless. You were never homeless in your life.
Throughout the season, Liz says she was trying to protect Alicia from misrepresenting her own experience. But Alicia was right.
How did a Real Housewives scene spark this conversation about who counts as homeless?
She did experience homelessness.
I was there watching it sort of the night it came out with everybody.
That's Dr. Molly Richard, assistant professor of the Department of Public Health for the University of Rhode Island's College of Health Sciences. She studies homelessness.
I was thinking, you know, this isn't really about Alicia's story per se, but it's our mental image of homelessness. And I was trying to think, like, what is Liz picturing when she's hearing that word when Alicia was saying, you know, I was homeless as a kid?
Beyond the depictions of tents and encampments on TV, there's a whole spectrum of experiences of homelessness that get overlooked. And many of us have seen it in our own lives. But why don't we consider these other situations as homelessness? And what would change if we did? To find out, I'm here with Dr. Margo Cushell, director at the University of San Francisco's Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and Dr. Molly Richard, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health for the University of Rhode Island's College of Health Sciences. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
And a reminder, if you love It's Been a Minute, which from the sweet comments y'all have been leaving, it sounds like maybe you do. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. That way you get new episodes the moment they drop. Why would someone like Liz be so ready to say that someone in Alicia's situation was, quote, never homeless in her life? What is the assumption being made about homelessness here? Molly, we'll start with you.
Thanks. Yeah. I was not surprised that she had that reaction or someone like her would have that reaction because America's public perception of homelessness is based on who we see outside. For a lot of people, it's folks who are living outside on the streets, people who have maybe serious mental illness or substance use. And so for a lot of folks, they do have this very particular image of homelessness based on visible, unsheltered homelessness.
Right.
Margo, how did that strike you? What do you think the assumption is underlying there?
I really do think there's this confusion between unsheltered, visible homelessness and the broad experience of homelessness, which encompasses living in a homeless shelter, some of which look quite like apartments, some not. look quite like warehouses with people stacked up. Also with what we sometimes colloquially call couch surfing, or people who move from place to place to place because they don't have really a place to stay.
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