Social Policy in Ontario

Tracking all homeless deaths is long overdue

Posted on January 3, 2017 in Inclusion Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – Starting Jan. 1, Toronto Public Health will track the deaths of homeless people across Toronto, not just those who die in city shelters. It’s a key step toward acknowledging the effects of homelessness.
Jan. 2, 2017.  Editorial

In the vibrant centre of Toronto, a man in his 40s froze to death in a T-shirt and jeans last January in a streetcar shelter at Yonge and Dundas Sts.

His death followed another one a day earlier when a man in his 60s was discovered inside a truck near Davenport Rd. and Lansdowne Ave.

Only a week later another man died when fire tore through a makeshift hut where he was sleeping in Scarborough.

Sadly, all these men were homeless. But disturbingly, their deaths may not have even been noted as such. That’s because the city only counts and acknowledges as being homeless those who die in city-administered shelters or shortly after leaving one.

But starting on Jan. 1, in a long overdue move, Toronto Public Health is working with 200 community agencies to confirm the deaths of all homeless people across the city.

At the same time the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario says it will confirm the death of a homeless person if it is aware of that fact.

The efforts to track all homeless deaths can’t come soon enough. They are an important step toward acknowledging the effects of homelessness and, hopefully, putting an end to it.

“Measuring a problem is the first step towards addressing it,” Stephen Hwang, director of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital, told the Star last year. “And if you don’t measure it, it tends not to be a high priority.”

Indeed, not knowing how many homeless people die in Toronto each year means the city can downplay the problem and ignore the root causes, especially those of street deaths.

Consider that in February of 2016, Toronto had recorded 217 shelter deaths since 2007. But a volunteer group that keeps an unofficial list of GTA homeless deaths, including those living on the streets, recorded 295 deaths in that same period – 78 more.

In future, those 78 deaths won’t be ignored. They will have to be accounted for. And that might help the city make wiser policy decisions.

Among them is whether the city needs more shelter beds for the homeless. A 2013 survey found there were 5,000 homeless people in the city, but currently there are only 4,300 shelter beds. And on one bitterly cold night in the week leading up to Christmas, all those shelters were filled past their capacity rate of 90 per cent.

At the same time, Toronto’s wait list for subsidized housing stands at a disturbingly high 172,087, forcing some people onto the streets.

That’s a dangerous place, especially in winter. As Cheri DiNovo, an NDP MPP who advocates for the homeless, bluntly puts it: “Death is one of the effects of homelessness.”

It’s past time we stopped ignoring that fact and started measuring it. It’s the first crucial step to ending it.

< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/01/02/tracking-all-homeless-deaths-is-long-overdue-editorial.html >

Tags: Health, homelessness, housing, mental Health, poverty, standard of living

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