Region saw homeless deaths rise last year

About twice as many died in 2018 compared with previous year

HARTFORD – One Enfield man without a permanent home was poisoned by carbon monoxide in his car. In Hartford, one man was shot to death in a bus shelter.

Yet another person died in an abandoned Hartford building in the middle of July. And several homeless people across the region, seemingly more than in past years, were felled by drugs. In 2018, at least 45 people in Greater Hartford died while experiencing homelessness, twice as many deaths as regional service providers counted in 2017 when they submitted names of the dead to Hartford’s annual homeless person’s memorial service.

Some of the spike may be explained by new leaders and more comprehensive counting at certain area nonprofits, but shelters say 2018 did seem deadlier than years past. The difference may be fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that killed 29,000 people in the U.S. in 2017, or 40 percent of all fatal drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In May, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner predicted as many as 740 people could be killed by fentanyl this year, an increase from the 670 fentanyl-related deaths in the state in 2017.

“There are devastating losses every year, but this year we experienced a really high number of drug-related deaths, more so than at least the year prior,” said Mollie Greenwood of Hartford nonprofit Journey Home, who has compiled the list of names for the past three memorial services in Hartford.

A handful of those people had recently moved from emergency shelters into supportive housing programs, where they lived independently but still had case managers and financial assistance, Greenwood said.

“That can be great and a real stabilizing force, but it can also be a really big change in someone’s day to day and a big shock to someone in recovery,” Greenwood said. “Addiction is a disease and it does not go away the second you get keys to an apartment.”

Greenwood helps manage Journey Home’s participation in the Greater Hart- ford Coordinated Access Network, one of eight regional programs across the state that matches people to shelter beds and housing assistance.

The level of need is significant — more than 18,600 individuals and families in Greater Hartford accessed the shelter system last year by dialing 211, the first step Connecticut residents must take in order to report a housing crisis.

About 4,500 of those joined a housing wait list.

The proportion of people who are literally homeless — living outside or in another unsuitable place, like an abandoned building — is relatively small, but it has seen an uptick in Greater Hartford even as homelessness in the state has declined.

Last year, there were 79 unsheltered people counted in the region, up from 40 the year before and 24 in 2016, according to the annual Point-in-Time counts carried out by the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness.

One of those people died on one of the first cold days of winter this year, said Tom Porell, operations manager of House of Bread. The man lived in Bushnell Park but would frequent the Hartford soup kitchen as a customer and a volunteer, Porell said.

His was one of 10 names the House of Bread gave to Journey Home this year, Porell’s first with the kitchen.

“Here’s a gentleman that came here every day and really gave back, knowing we were giving him something,” Porell said. “That’s the picture the people on the outside don’t always see. As dire as his situation may have been, he was still willing to help people in their situations.”

Jose Vega-Figueroa, director of Hartford’s McKinney Men’s Shelter, was disappointed to see just a handful of people at this year’s service, held Dec. 28 at Center Church on Main Street. Organizers rang a bell and added a key to a large ring for each person who’d died, but there weren’t enough attendees for another tradition — having one person in the audience echo back the reading of each name.

Instead, the smattering of people repeated every name together.

This year’s count will be held Tuesday night.

“This is a real serious issue,” Vega-Figueroa said. “We need the help of the people.”