Homeless people in Toronto are dying at a rate of more than two per week on average, according to disturbing new data collected by the city.From January to the end of March 2017, a total of 27 homeless deaths were tracked in an expanded research initiative led by Toronto Public Health and supported by about 200 health and social services agencies. The median age of the deceased is 51.“It’s a sign that our city is failing,” said City Councillor Joe Cressy (Trinity-Spadina). “It seems to me that in a city as wealthy as ours that to have dozens of people dying on the streets is wrong, it’s disturbing and it’s a failure on all of us. While we might not be able to prevent the loss of every life, we certainly can prevent many of these if we do more.”Advocates for the homeless have long maintained that efforts thus far to accurately count the dead have under-reported the true scope of the tragedy.Previously, the city has recorded deaths only in city-administered shelters; that number for all of 2016 was 33.The death rate for 2017, if it continues at two per week through December, would top 100 — the most ever recorded in Toronto.“While we hoped the new numbers would not be much higher, the results thus far are not unexpected,” said Paul Fleiszer, manager, surveillance and epidemiology at Toronto Public Health, referring to the new data. “Unfortunately, the real number may even be higher because we are at the early stages of the project and still getting more agencies to come on board to the reporting system.”As a comparison to the 27 deaths recorded in the first three months of 2017 by Toronto Public Health and its partners, volunteers with the Toronto Homeless Memorial recorded 11 over the same period.The memorial is an unofficial record of homeless people in the GTA who have died since the 1980s. Deaths are vetted and the list maintained by outreach volunteers, such as street nurses a ...
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