Street deaths are preventable. The prevalence and effects of poverty, including the links between poverty and poor health, are well documented internationally, nationally, provincially, and at the regional and local levels throughout B.C. Income inequality is associated with the premature deaths of 40,000 Canadians a year. Poverty is literally killing people.
Six months ago, the Times Colonist reported that Victoria has the highest per-capita deaths of homeless people in B.C. That article was based on a report of 281 homeless deaths over the previous eight years in the province; 70 were deaths on Vancouver Island.
The University of Victoria Poverty Law Club lists more than 30 deaths in 2012 of individuals accessing services from a day program serving people living in poverty. The group is petitioning the B.C. Coroners Service to investigate these street-related deaths, as part of the coroner’s mandate to conduct investigations when there is a strong public interest or potential for prevention of death in similar circumstances in the future.
Tragically, all of these reports recognize that counts of homeless deaths are gross underestimates of the number of people dying in our communities. We know too many of those who have lost their lives due to circumstances created by poverty.
Working within the street community, we see people struggling with their health and housing every day. The effects of homelessness and living in poverty are typically compounded by concurrent disorders such as mental illness and substance abuse, paired with overwhelming discrimination and stigma leading to far-reaching and long-lasting mental and physical effects.
Essential health care is often inaccessible due to lack of availability or fear of discrimination, while people struggle to meet their basic needs with income assistance that has not risen substantially in decades. The lack of affordable, safe and appropriate housing further pushes individuals living well below the poverty line into a life of negative health outcomes.
Until poverty is recognized as a critical health-care issue, we will continue to see our most vulnerable citizens lose their lives needlessly. It’s our hope that, as a community, we will open our eyes and hearts before we lose another mother, daughter, father, sister or child.
Preventing street deaths will take creative responses from government, organizations and individuals. We need to better document and investigate street deaths when they happen to understand and address systemic inequities that create and perpetuate adverse health outcomes and early death for people living in extreme poverty. It is imperative to look to the resiliency and survivorship of the street community to inform these strategies.
The expression of a strong public interest and public mandate to prevent future street deaths will be highlighted in this week of education and action. We urge everyone to join us in calling for a focused, provincewide response to put an end to the structural inequalities and lack of supports that are allowing these unnecessary and preventable deaths.
Bruce Wallace is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria school of social work and a member of the yes2scs (supervised consumption services) campaign. Katie Lacroix is co-ordinator of the peer-advisory committee to yes2scs. With Marianne Alto and Bernie Pauly, they are speakers at Moving Forward: Public Forum on Supervised Consumption Services this evening at 6:30 p.m. at First Metropolitan Church, 932 Balmoral Rd. For more on this week’s events, go to bit.ly/1Bg9JYU.
