About 631 homeless people died between July 2019 and June 2020, a 52% increase over the previous fiscal year, according to data released Tuesday by the Blasio government, a bleak indicator of the effect of coronavirus on people needy housing.
The greatest number of these deaths occurred between April and June, when COVID-19 began to affect the city. As infections increased and black communities were devastated by the pandemic, so did the city’s vast shelter system, where single adults often share a room with several other people.
“This year reflects unimaginable challenges and huge losses, including losses over several months at the height of the pandemic, when our city experienced deaths and trauma on a scale never seen before,” said Steven Banks, New York Commissioner for Social Services.
In June, 120 homeless people died of COVID, the vast majority living in shelters. Only 12 lived on the street or in other precarious situations.
Because the sheltered congregations were hindering social distance, Banks said that over an eight-week period in late spring the city moved 10,000 people to hotel rooms to prevent the virus from spreading. He predicted that the death toll would have been much worse without the emergency measure.
“We know that the strategy saved lives and we will be guided by science when the time comes to return to the congregated shelter, but we know that the urgency with which we act was fundamental,” he said.
While the report runs through June, the city told Gothamist that, between July and now, only seven people within the homeless shelter system have died of COVID and of those seven, only two have occurred since the summer.
Upper West Side residents sued the city over a relocation; they claimed that the Lucerne Hotel’s homeless people were making their neighborhood unsafe. Although Mayor Bill de Blasio sided with the Upper West Siders, a state appeals court earlier this month banned the city from moving hotel occupants until the case progressed through the legal process.
The death data are part of a report prepared by the city’s Social Assistance Secretariat with the assistance of the city’s Health Secretariat and the coroner. A 2006 city law requires that the report be submitted to the city council annually.
In the past 10 years alone, the number of homeless deaths has more than tripled. In general, middle-aged men die the most. In a given year, more common health problems, such as heart failure, diabetes and cancer, affect the homeless population. But this year, a much more deadly new threat – COVID-19 – did the most damage.
Giselle Routhier, Policy Director for the Coalition for the Homeless, said the death toll was devastating and said that while the city has “densified” parts of the system with the use of hotels, some people remain in shelters.
“We need the city to use hotel rooms specifically for these people and also for people who are on the streets – direct placements in hotel rooms for one person – since we are seeing the second wave coming,” said Routhier.
While COVID was the leading cause of death for individuals living in shelters, drug use was the leading cause of death among the homeless population as a whole. About 131 people died from drug use, compared with 116 in the previous fiscal year. The vast majority of these deaths were due to accidental overdoses by people living in a city shelter, according to the report. Since the pandemic began, overdoses have also increased for the general population, both nationally and locally.
Chinazo Cunningham, professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said he was not surprised by the rise in overdose deaths among homeless people, considering how difficult the pandemic has made medical care, whether because of an addiction or a chronic problem. of health. She said that it is no longer possible for health professionals to attend appointments and many homeless people do not have a telephone to make appointments or receive telehealth.
“One patient in particular, all this time since the pandemic, had no phone number and intercepted me at the park while I was walking to my clinic,” she said. “We make our visits in the park so that he can get the medicine”.
To combat overdose deaths, the city has trained staff and shelter residents to administer naloxone, a drug used to treat an opioid overdose. According to the city, last year naloxone was administered in homeless shelters 742 times; 92% of the time, these overdoses were reversed.
Cunningham said more should be done on the health system front end to deal with substance use disorders, rather than waiting until a crisis breaks out.
In addition to moving residents from shelters to commercial hotel rooms, the city said it is also running tests on shelters throughout the system. To date, according to the city, about 43,000 tests have been carried out. Only 1% had a positive result.
“These are strategies that are working and we need to continue them,” said Banks.