The 35-year-old son of a Hollywood talent agent whose clients included Dolly Parton, George Clooney and a British prince, has been taken into custody in Los Angeles after a bloody torso authorities say probably belongs to his wife was discovered in a strip-mall dumpster.
Sam Haskell, who was booked on suspicion of murder on Wednesday, is also suspected of killing his wife’s parents who are missing, detectives have said.
Capt Scot Williams of the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division said the torso discovered in an Encino mall, five miles from Haskell’s home, was assumed to be Haskell’s wife, Mei Haskell. The grim discovery was made after workers at Haskell’s home reported seeing what appeared to be human remains in his driveway on Tuesday that later vanished. The following day, an unhoused man searching for recyclable material in a dumpster between a restaurant and a hair salon found the female torso stuffed in a duffel bag.
Or maybe it’s trying to recognize that the places homeless people live (tents, boxes, squats, etc.) are still homes of a sort.
I think this is it. I live in the PNW, some of the shelters I’ve seen are absolutely homes. They will sometimes have multiple tents assembled into multi-room dwellings with a variety of amenities.
Without an address, safety codes or legal protection, they clearly don’t qualify as a house or apartment or whatever.
I’ve never heard it said, but a home seems to be a fundamental part of being human. Even the most nomadic of societies had some sort of portable home they traveled with.
Calling someone homeless is dehumanizing. Unhoused recognizes that they don’t fit into the standard mold off society, but are no less human for it.
To be clear, this isn’t to say we should just accept one another’s differences and just move on with our lives. The unhoused represent a wide variety of complex social problems that should be addressed with humility and compassion.
We can begin that process by trying to guard their humanity in our own minds.
That’s how I feel about it. For me, the terms matter. I live somewhere I’m confronted with this every day. I try to be on guard against dehumanizing thinking. I think if you live somewhere it’s less an issue then this whole debate probably feels like pointless political correctness.