Eighty-eight people died while homeless in Multnomah County last year.
That’s 32 more than the year before, and the total of 2013 and 2014 combined. And it’s yet another sign Portland’s homelessness crisis is taking a toll beyond the perennial focuses of messy camps or inconvenient panhandlers.
The 2015 death toll comes from the county’s yearly “Domicile Unknown” report, in which health officials suss out medical examiner investigations where a deceased person was either known to be homeless or didn’t have a home officials could find. The county’s been doing these reports since 2011, and this is by far the highest number it found. Despite a one-year improvement in 2013, there’s been an average of 16 percent increase in the number of people who die homeless in Multnomah County since 2011.
“Many of the deaths were preventable; others were decades premature,” the new report says. “For most, access to housing, mental and physical health care and substance abuse services would have likely made a difference.”
As always, the report delves into the demographics and causes behind the deaths. Exactly half involved substance abuse, for instance. A quarter were brought on by opioid use, as the city and country grapple with a heroin epidemic.
Most people were discovered in outdoor public spaces, more than half of the deaths were classified as “accidental,” and in a year when shootings at or near homeless camps spurred media frenzies, just one more person died via homicide than in 2014.
Also: 17 women died on the streets, a 325 percent increase from four in 2014.
“The numbers in this report are staggering,” Multnomah Count Chair Deborah Kafoury writes in an introduction (she’s been calling the death toll “unacceptable” since 2011, when 47 people died).
One new facet of this year’s report: The county has a map showing, by zip code, where the most deaths occurred. Unsurprisingly, the area containing Old Town/Chinatown was a hotspot. So was the 97220 zip code, which extends along a wide stretch of the Columbia River, but also extends between NE 82nd and 122nd north of Burnside.
This year’s report also offers the stories of three of the 88 people who died without homes this year. They include a 32 year old who had difficulty shaking an opioid addiction after being prescribed pain pills in his late 20s, and an Oregon State University graduate who struggled with schizophrenia and poor vision.
Give the full report a read.
I skimmed the report but I’m not seeing a measure against the baseline population. In other words, is the rise in deaths proportional to a change in the overall homeless population in the county? The # of deaths has increased on average 16% per year — did the homeless population increase at the same rate?
Good point. Based on the limited snapshot we have from last year’s “point-in-time” count, homelessness did not rise at anywhere near this rate between 2013 and 2015.
http://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownP…
Another count is scheduled, I believe, early next year.
Gotcha, thanks. I’m guessing the main change falls under substance abuse (Accidental deaths) and side-effects from substance abuse (“Natural” death). Would be interesting to see year-over-year for cause of death (particularly for women given that awful spike there).
Disgraceful rent-gouging is killing this city.
There are a number of reasons someone might be homeless, including mental illness and drug addiction. This report brought to mind Barbara Roberts’ quote about Measure 5, which cut social services in Oregon that have not been restored: “More people will die because of what we have done here.”
It is unsurprising that with Hales putting out the welcome sign encouraging so many homeless people to move here that we have a higher number of deaths. They have pulled almost 2000 used needles off the springwater corridor. Our mayor has only made this problem worse.
econoline: You’re a fucking liar.
Euphonius, sorry but you are wrong from the oregonian: 1,875 hypodermic needles, 25 gallons of urine, 16 gallons of fecal matter, 10 pounds of dried feces and more than five 40-yard dumpster loads of garbage. They aren’t even close to done yet and already 1875 used needles!
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index…
Econoline, you’re correct about the cleanup efforts. However, current evidence suggest that the number of deaths doesn’t correlate to an increase in the homeless population (“encouraging so many homeless people to move here”, as you say). The number of deaths increased at a much faster rate than the homeless population overall based on the available info.
There are some *big* caveats there, however. The population survey was taken in January 2015 while the death tally was through December 2015, so it’s possible there’s a population spike in 2015. (There’s also a host of issues associated with the population count as noted in the article Dirk linked: difficulty in getting true counts, the seasonal nature of the homeless population outdoors, etc.)
So while there’s evidence something else shifted to cause the increase in deaths we can’t discount that it’s a side-effect of a drastically increasing homeless population.
@Sok I can tell you there are a lot more homeless people on my street than there were in 2015, and many of them are living in RV’s with out of state plates. Homeless counts are a tricky business, but step outside and walk down the street and you will see there are way more of them than there were 18 months ago.