Homeless dying at increasing rate in BC

A new report out today shows British Columbia’s homeless population are dying at an alarming rate.

Megaphone Magazine says at least 46 homeless people lost their lives in BC in 2014, a 70% increase from the year before.

“If someone is on the street they are at an incredibly high risk of danger. As these numbers show; they are more likely to overdose, more likely to die by suicide, by motor vehicle accidents.” Megaphone Executive Director Sean Cordon said

In 2014 the BC Coroners Service determined 52.2% of homeless deaths were “accidental”, which compares to just 16.5% in the general population. A person on the streets is roughly twice as likely to die by suicide or homicide.

Nine homeless died in Prince George between 2007 and 2014.

But Cordon says the real number is likely much higher, given the climate of Northern BC.

“We know that many homeless people can’t survive out on the streets, it’s just too cold. So they are often couchsurfing or finding a place to stay on someone’s living room floor. They are what we call the ‘invisible homeless’ and we know that is a much higher percentage of homeless people in the North and Prince George.”

He added that the BC Coroners Service definition of ‘homeless’ under the Coroners Act is far too narrow. Four of the nine report recommendations are targeted at the Coroner, saying that the problem is likely much worse than numbers show.

“So someone is homeless… and they get ill and end up in the hospital, if they die under the care of a physician in a hospital they won’t be considered homeless. The Coroner Service won’t investigate that death.”

A squatter in an empty building also isn’t considered homeless, nor is a person who left housing for their own safety (bed bugs, domestic violence, etc) and still has an address attached to their name.

Forefront in the report’s recommendations is a call for more affordable housing across the province. It also calls for an expansion of harm reductions services such as needle exchanges and safe injection sites.

“This is a crisis that we have an obvious solution to; if you want to stop homeless deaths, you have to stop homelessness.” Cordon said