Almost 1,500 people are dying in homelessness every year, with new research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showing a 63% surge in preventable deaths.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare today 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 1,489 in 2021-22 – a 63% increase.
While over half the deaths (46%) in the study period were people aged 35-54 years, over 1 in 10 (or 1,500 in total) were people aged 25-34 and 1 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.
It comes after a Guardian Australia investigation of more than 600 homelessness deaths showed they were dying, on average, 30 years prematurely, at an average age of 44.
The AIHW 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, around one-quarter (24% or nearly 3,000 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.
The CEO of Homelessness Australia, Kate Colvin, said all of these deaths could have been prevented.
“These are deaths of needless poverty and despair,” Colvin said.
“These deaths are directly connected to the trauma of homelessness. When someone has no safe place to call home, when they’re turned away from services because the system is overwhelmed, when they face violence on the streets – the toll on their physical and mental health is devastating.”
Prof 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 1,500 a year “staggering”, and said it would trigger enormous investment and uproar in any other context. Instead, she 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.
“It is particularly heartbreaking that these deaths were all among people who were seeking assistance from homelessness services in their last year of life, a life that then was cut far too short.”
She said the AIHW’s figures are likely to be conservative, because not all people experiencing homelessness access specialist services. But she said the AIHW was to be “commended for this report, which by its very existence validates that deaths among people experiencing homelessness can and should be counted”.
Earlier this year, the Guardian used an analysis of hidden death reports to state and territory coroners, a review of 10 years’ worth of publicly available inquest findings, and interviews with dozens of homeless Australians, victims’ families, frontline support workers and researchers to show that many homelessness deaths were both preventable and inextricably linked to the critical undersupply of housing and support services.
The investigation revealed that suicide and overdose – described as “deaths of despair” – are major drivers of deaths among those experiencing homelessness.
Such deaths accounted for one-fifth and one-third of deaths respectively between January 2010 and December 2020.
Stephen Avery, a street chaplain working with Launceston’s homeless community, lost a close friend, Daniel Tommerup, in 2021.
Avery remembers him losing hope before his death.
“He was just so depressed and morose and melancholy,” Avery said. “All the hope in his eyes was gone.”
Avery says the AIHW’s data showed a “disproportionate” number of deaths among those experiencing homelessness.
He is now campaigning for Services Australia to introduce a new homelessness category when dealing with vulnerable Australians to recognise the unique struggle of those sleeping rough.
“Centrelink’s mandatory obligations cause those of the street community on Jobseeker much stress, seeing applying for and holding a job has unique struggles for the homeless.”
