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There are many words and phrases that could be used to describe my current station in life – just the other day I was called a bum.

I have no job and no official residence, so being called a bum really isn’t far off. But I’m not homeless in the urban, change-bumming, street-sleeping sense of the word. Only in the lacking-of-residence sense. Like many UCLA students lost in the Westwood apartment shuffle, I’ve been couch surfing.

Personally, I prefer the word “dosser,” a term often used in the UK, to being called a bum.

In a wild fit of English-major nerdiness, I looked up the etymology of dosser in the Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary defines it as “one who frequents, or sleeps at, a common lodging-house.”

This definition dates back to G.R. Sim’s 1884 description of working-class housing people who “crowd in at night and sleep on the stairs of the houses. They call them (h)appy dossers. (H)appy dossers are people who sleep where they can.”

The happy-dosser image fits better than the stereotypical one of panhandling bums and disreputable vagrants. In fact, the dosser is a completely different socioeconomic breed.

Modern-day dossers usually have legitimate jobs (I’m still looking) and normal social lives (drinking until 6 a.m. is normal, right?). They just don’t have proper homes or apartments.

Some rent cheap hotels; others crash on a friend’s couch or an inflatable mattress. Some doss by choice (it’s quite a party) but oftentimes people are forced into dossing because of oppressive economic factors. These people don’t deserve to be called bums. In fact, many of the real city bums don’t deserve the dirty looks and snickers our fantastically unaccepting society likes to give them. Some people prefer to live in the street, while others just can’t afford a place to live.

In a college town such as Westwood, demand for housing is so high that property owners can charge whatever they want. The fact that Westwood is also an upper-class area doesn’t really help the situation for starving students working for meager pay in clothing stores and burger joints.

This can be too costly for many, forcing people to live further away from campus and commute via bus or carpool.

Those who prefer to stay closer to campus have to share rooms in order to afford the high prices. I know of a two-bedroom apartment on Midvale that houses six girls who pay $550 each.

With housing prices absurdly high, and more people being crammed into smaller rooms, it seems that a full-fledged dossing culture is looming on the horizon for UCLA. At UC Santa Barbara, the dossing culture is even more evolved. With 17,000 people packed into six-tenths of a square mile, this seems almost inevitable.

It’s crazy to pay over $500 per month for one-third of a room, but every year those rooms get rented, and the prices keep going up. In some cases, it’s actually cheaper to live in a hotel. The West End Hotel on Sawtelle Avenue in West Los Angeles rents long-term rooms for around $180 per week. That’s cheaper than a Westwood studio, and probably a more interesting experience.

Last year I lived in a proper apartment, and I let a friend stay on my couch for well over five months. This year the tables have turned: There are three of us living in a one-bedroom apartment. I sleep on a mattress in the living room.

In any sort of shared living situation, there is a lack of personal space and a line for the shower in the morning, but there is also a certain amount of reciprocity and camaraderie. We help each other out and pay each other back when we can. We pool our resources and spend all our money on beer. It’s really a constant party.

Perhaps the dossing lifestyle gets a bad rap in this world of fearful conformity and intolerance.

Even if I could afford my own apartment right now, I’m not sure if I would want to give up this cheap and exciting lifestyle.

Got a couch Deitchman can crash on? Let him know at jdeitchman@media.ucla.edu.