10 people experiencing homelessness in Hamilton died in early 2022, doctors say; overdoses lead cause

Drug overdoses are a leading cause of death for people experiencing homelessness in Hamilton, according to new figures released by a group of local healthcare providers.

The group monitoring mortality rates within the homeless population within the city found that between December 2021 and May 2022 at least 10 people died, out of those, eight people died of an overdose. 

According to the group, seven out of the 10 were people staying within a shelter, nine out of 10 were men. The average age at the time of their deaths was 43 years.

"These people are dying very early," said Dr. Inna Berditchevskaia, a doctor of internal medicine focusing on shelter medicine and homelessness and part of the team documenting these deaths. 

The team, which includes Dr. Claire Bodkin and other medical residents, released the recent figures on Oct. 4. They gave their first report back in January, showing that 19 people experiencing homelessness had died in Hamilton between June and November 2021. 

The group recently updated their site with the latest figures and asked voters to use the data to make informed decisions in the upcoming Oct. 24 election when it comes to the response they'd like to see to homelessness. 

"There was a needs assessment a few years back that showed that Hamilton needs more supervised and safe consumption sites and things are moving extremely slowly in terms of that," Berditchevskaia told CBC Hamilton. 

According to the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database published by Statistics Canada, the average life expectancy of a Hamiltonian is 81 years — dramatically higher than the 43 years for those living in homelessness in Hamilton, Breditchevskaia pointed out. 

 "It's really not a stretch to say that homelessness in and of itself kills because these people are dying just so much earlier than other Hamiltonians," Breditchevskaia said.

The data on the group's website says that substance abuse and mental illness were key comorbid factors in homeless deaths. Comordid factors refer to causes and conditions that may have contributed to the person's death. 

It's not a stretch to say that homelessness in and of itself kills.- Dr. Inna Breditchevskaia 

According to the City of Hamilton's Housing and Homelessness Dashboard, as of August 2022, there were over 1,400 people experiencing homelessness in the city. 

The site says the current system-wide shelter beds capacity sits at 619 beds, and over 400 people in the city have been homeless for longer than six months.

Berditchevskaia stressed how alarming it is that so many of those who died were accessing shelter services at the time and how the city needs to increase their efforts to prevent these deaths.

Calls for drug policy reform, safer supply of drugs

The group pointed specifically to the need to transform housing and drug policies. 

"More than anything, our data reflects the urgency with which policy makers must listen, learn, and act in order to pursue safe, supported, and permanent housing; and to radically transform Canada's drug policy to facilitate widespread access to a safe, legal, regulated drug supply," the group said in a media release.

In August, Hamilton city councillors voted to support a federal government initiative to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs.

At the time, Coun. Brad Clark said he was hopeful, if Hamilton does see the decriminalization of some drugs, it would lead to an increase in substance abuse treatment, "which is a positive thing in our community."

Berditchevskaia believes that the city needs to do more before more people die. 

"The city needs to find more supervised and safe consumption sites first and foremost," she said. "That's looking extremely downstream though, that's looking at the very end at what's killing these people and how can we intervene...and then the big upstream thing is people really need to be housed," she said.

The group's report came as the city reported an increased number of suspected drug-related deaths in Hamilton between Sept. 26 to October 2. 

"The number of suspect drug-related deaths was eight, which is two times higher than the weekly median for the past year," the city said on its website on Oct. 7. "Paramedic response to suspected opioid overdoses were high during the same week," said the notice, citing figures from the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario. 

In August, on International Overdose Awareness Day, Olivia Mancini, co-founder of the Hamilton-based Student Overdose Prevention and Education Network, called government's response to the opioid crisis so far "deeply inadequate," and stressed the importance of overdose prevention and education, harm reduction, and naloxone training now more than ever.

"Getting more people to carry naloxone in the community as a basic first aid response…and educating and providing people the knowledge and tools to save a life with naloxone," she said.

Mancini said she feels that decriminalizing drugs is too shallow a plan.

"It doesn't even address the people dying, it just ends the criminalizing of people that are using drugs," she said. "We need immediate action for a safer supply of drugs, harm reduction measures [in shelters] and more safe spaces to use drugs, like inhalation sites to smoke drugs."