Real Change News | Street deaths increase

July 15, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 32

Short Takes

Street deaths increase

by: Rosette Royale , Assistant Editor

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Eighty-eight. That’s how many people, believed to be homeless, died in King County in 2007.
Those numbers stem from a report entitled “Deaths among people presumed homeless in King County, 2007 Annual Report,” released in early July by Public Health/Seattle & King County. The number amounts to 20 fewer deaths of “likely homeless” people than the previous year.

Among those ‘07 deaths, 68 were male, which, the report notes, means “the number of deaths among males … decreased 29 percent compared to 2006.” But that stat carries a sad corollary: the number of deaths for females — at 20 — increased by some 43 percent.

And there is more data, broken down by manner of death (35 percent were attributed to intoxication, which includes alcohol, “street drugs” such as cocaine of methamphetamine, prescription drugs or a combination), season (more than 54 percent occurred in the winter) and location (76 percent died in Seattle).

But the 12-page document isn’t all statistics. On two separate occasions, the report addresses the unknowns inherent in such information gathering. It states, early on, “that our current data may not capture the deaths of all individuals in King County who die and were likely living homeless at the time of their death.”

And at the end, under a heading marked “Discussion:” “This report … does highlight violent, unnatural, sudden, and/or unattended deaths of a significant number of people in our community who were living homeless and gives us an important window into the last moments of their lives. We may ask questions about where our system may have failed, and how many premature deaths could have been prevented. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the answers to such questions.”

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