But then would you call yourself homeless if you had friends that let you sleep at their place? That feels disingenuous, there must be a better term for that. Like imagine that situation, if someone would ask you "are you homeless", and you have a place to sleep and say yes, isn't that strange? Perhaps I need to update my definition of common usage of the term but it seemed strange to me to use homeless for someone in, admittedly not the best situation, but with somewhere to sleep outside of a homeless shelter. Thanks for explaining.

It depends on the situation; I would absolutely consider someone homeless if they don’t know where they are going to sleep tonight, or three days from now, etc and does not have a safety net. A friend lets you crash on the couch a few days then back to sleeping in your car as your only option aside from sleeping in the streets - that’s homeless for sure in my book.

I would not consider someone homeless who chooses to couch surf around friends’ pads for a while as they figure out something permanent, but has options and means, certainly not homeless

Agreed. That's why my emphasis on the word home. You can have shelter, i.e. a roof over your head but you don't have what you'd call a home but you want a home. Shelter is also a loaded word, i.e. what about the "homeless" person that has a tent and is camping out in a rail yard somewhere? Is that enough "shelter" to count?

A "digital nomad" that crashes on a different friend's couch, possibly in different countries even every month by choice is not really homeless.

Someone that can't afford / find a place other than a friend's couch or their car is homeless. Even if he's not completely shelterless. Same with a homeless person sleeping in a homeless shelter. They have shelter. But no home. This one gets more complicated in terms of the wording because some of these homeless people have been doing it for so long that they actually seem to prefer to be home and shelterless in some cases. Sometimes they don't really prefer sleeping in a church entrance during sub-zero (C) but they prefer it over the rules or company in the homeless shelter (e.g. alcohol / pet related). These are many of the "living in the streets" people my parent commenter thought were the only ones that count as homeless I suppose.

That is the use of the term technically in the UK yes. You don't have a home. You're staying somewhere or sleeping somewhere but you don't have a home.

If you're sleeping in a homeless shelter, isn't that a place you have to sleep? Are you now not homeless?

"Rough sleeper" is the term for sleeping on the streets. That helps a key distinction between people who don't have a place they can rely on and people sleeping under bridges. Both are bad outcomes but require different handling.

It's tricky, but it is important to have terms that we can use for lots of technical things.

Think about it terms of how precarious their sleeping arrangement is.

Own your place? You're golden.

Rent officially? Probably have good tenant protection laws.

Anything else is subject to circumstances which might change with short notice. If you're crashing on a friends' couch you're one disagreement or girlfriend away from being kicked out.