Collection of data is lagging, but a report by Erin McCormick appearing in The Guardian includes new research from a number of sources
‘Homelessness is lethal’: US deaths among those without housing are surging
"The number of Americans dying while homeless has surged dramatically in the past five years, an exclusive analysis by the Guardian in conjunction with an academic expert at the University of Washington has shown. An examination of 20 US urban areas found the number of deaths among people living without housing shot up by 77% in the five years ending in 2020. . .
“People who die while experiencing homelessness are some of the most neglected in society,” said Matt Fowle, University of Washington researcher and co-creator of the organization Homeless Deaths Count. “These are folks who most need our help and are least likely to receive it.”
While the federal government makes no effort to count deaths nationally of people deemed homeless, the Guardian worked with Fowle to collect local data from large urban areas, where consistent year-to-year counts were available. The stark results stretch from Los Angeles and Seattle to New York, Philadelphia and Miami, via the heartland.
The Guardian’s analysis counted 18,000 people who died homeless over five years in encampments, on sidewalks or in shelters, including 5,000 deaths in 2020 alone. In most cases, the deaths were tracked by county coroners and medical examiners, but in a few locations only local non-profits kept track.
Experts at the non-profit National Health Care for the Homeless Council say that, in many places, the people who perish without housing are never counted. They estimate the total number of deaths is actually between 17,000 and 40,000 every year.
“Every person and every life matters,’’ said the council’s Katherine Cavanaugh. “That’s part of why we are encouraging people to just track these deaths. We want to make sure that we can use that information to improve situations for people in the future and not have these deaths be happening in vain.”
[...] Beyond the direct medical causes, factors such as widespread lack of affordable housing drive increases in homelessness and, ultimately, deaths, experts say. . .
Experts agreed that the best prescription is to house people.
“You cannot have a healthy society with this many people living on the economic and social margins,” said UCSF’s Kushel. “Homelessness is lethal. We’re not going to be able to solve this without solving homelessness.”
For UW researcher Fowle, who is working on a doctoral thesis about the crisis of US homeless deaths, it comes down to whether our society can muster the empathy to act.
“It’s a tragedy that people are dying without housing,” he said. “We know the solutions. Housing saves lives and, for these people, is often a form of healthcare.”
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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has released its latest report into homelessness in the United States, finding that some 580,000 Americans were sleeping rough in 2020. Last year, levels of homelessness climbed for the fourth consecutive year, growing two percent. That was driven by increases in the unsheltered homeless population between 2019 and 2020.
The number of people sleeping in sheltered locations such as emergency shelters or transitional housing grew by 0.6 percent while there was a seven percent increase in the number of people sleeping outdoors, whether that was the street, abandoned buildings or locations unfit for human habitation. The report found that 61 percent of all homeless Americans were staying in sheltered locations last year while 39 percent were sleeping rough outdoors.
Despite the recent increases, the report notes that the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2020 was 10 percent lower than in 2007 when the data was first reported. Even though unsheltered homelessness has risen significantly over the past five years, it has actually experienced a long-term decline of 12 percent."
