46 homeless die in city so far this year
Advocates press for more details to ‘put a picture out there of who’s homeless’ in Toronto
The first six months of 2017 haven’t been kind to Toronto’s homeless.
From January through June, 46 homeless people have died across the city, according to new information released Wednesday by Toronto Public Health in an ongoing initiative to monitor these deaths.
Second-quarter data from an expanded tracking program, led by Toronto Public Health and supported by about 200 health and social service agencies, reported that 19 deaths occurred from April 1 through June 30. The median age for the deceased during this period was 48.5.
“The numbers are shocking and deeply disturbing,” said Councillor Joe Cressy (Trinity-Spadina). “If the test of a city is how well it cares for the most vulnerable, these deaths show we are failing.”
While the city collects a broad range of information about the deceased, such as gender, unofficial cause of death, and location of death, it only makes public the number of homeless dead and the median age. Advocates for the homeless say more data should be made public so that citizens have a better understanding of who is dying and why.
“We want to know some categories of cause of death; how many opiate overdoses? How many suicides?” CATHY CROWE LONGTIME STREET NURSE
“It’s like the city has put this (death tally) up there without fanfare, without any data to help anyone understand it except for the (median) age,” said longtime Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe, also a distinguished visiting practitioner at Ryerson University’s department of politics and public administration.
She said she believes sharing other category information with the public “would help put a picture out there of who’s homeless” in Toronto.
“I don’t think we want names but I think we want gender breakdown, I think we want to know some categories of cause of death; how many opiate overdoses? How many suicides? How many trauma-related? Were any related to weather?” Crowe continued. “We know zero.” In the initiative’s first-quarter statistics, collected from January to the end of March, 27 homeless deaths were reported via the citywide data network. The median age during that time was 51.
The total of 46 deaths — from January through June — produced an average rate of 1.8 deaths per week, with a median age of 50 over the first half of the year.
“Life expectancy in Toronto is approximately 80 years. While these are early results, the age at death for the homeless population represents a serious health inequity,” said Paul Fleiszer, manager of surveillance and epidemiology at Toronto Public Health.
He said research and “lived experi- ence” have shown that factors such as unaffordable and poor-quality housing and housing instability are associated with a range of poor mental and physical health outcomes, including injuries and chronic and communicable diseases.
“As a result, homelessness represents a major contribution to the loss of potential years of life,” Fleiszer said.
Crowe said that the median age of the deceased “means that some very, very young people died, and that’s not normal. “It’s scary.” Advocates for the homeless have long protested that previous attempts to accurately count the dead have under-reported the extent of the tragic situation.
Previously, the city has recorded deaths only in city-administered shelters; that number for all of 2016 was 33.
The new initiative’s third-quarter results are scheduled for release in October, with the 2017 report finalized by January 2018.
The tracking of homeless deaths across the city, which began on Jan.1, 2017, was spurred in part by a 2016 Toronto Star investigation that found the province and most Ontario municipalities have no mandate to track homeless deaths comprehensively, if at all. Volunteers with the Toronto Homeless Memorial, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, next to the Eaton Centre, have been compiling an unofficial list of homeless people in the GTA who have died since the 1980s. There are now more than 850 names on the memorial. Its highest annual toll was 72 in 2005.
“These numbers should be a wakeup call to politicians of all stripes,” said Cressy, referring to the new Toronto Public Health data.
“With increased supports we know that many of these deaths are preventable.”