Almost 1500 people are dying in homelessness every year, with new research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showing a 63 per cent surge in preventable deaths. Source: The Guardian.
The institute yesterday released an analysis of a decade of data, showing 12,500 people who had accessed homelessness services died over the 10-year period to 2022.
The death rate of those people was 1.8 times the general population, and the annual death toll rose from 914 in 2012-13 to 1489 in 2021-22 – a 63 per cent increase.
While over half the deaths (46 per cent) in the study period were people aged 35-54 years, over one in 10 (or 1500 in total) were people aged 25-34 and one in 100 (160 total) were children under 14.
Suicide and accidental poisoning were the leading causes of death, accounting for between one-quarter to one-third of all deaths each year.
In 2021-22, people who had accessed homelessness services in their final year accounted for one in six accidental poisoning deaths and one in 20 suicides nationwide.
The institute’s study of the 10-year period showed the average age of death was 46, much younger than clients who were experiencing homelessness but not connected with services, who had an average age of 54 at death, and far below the national average of 83.
Of those who died, about one-quarter (24 per cent or nearly 3000 people) had been rough sleeping in the last year of life, while the others were couch surfing, in temporary accommodation or had housing but were linked in with a service provider.
Lisa Wood, a health researcher at the University of Notre Dame Australia who oversees a project counting homelessness deaths in Perth, called the death toll of 1500 a year “staggering”, and said it would trigger enormous investment and uproar in any other context.
Instead, Professor Wood said, there has been a “deathly silence” around the issue.
“The enormous annual death toll among people accessing SHS homelessness services in Australia reflected in this AIHW report is a shocking indictment on our society, a nation that has long prided itself on a ‘fair go for all’,” she said.
FULL STORY
‘Deaths of needless poverty and despair’: homelessness report reveals surge in fatalities in Australia (By Cait Kelly and Christopher Knaus, The Guardian)
