“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,” J.T. said, as he was sitting hunched over on a bench outside the 12th and Imperial Transit Center.
J.T. wasn’t talking about the fact that he had lost his driver’s license. He wasn’t even talking about not having a place to sleep that night. He was talking about the greater existential pressures of homelessness: feeling alone, feeling trapped — and feeling as if nothing could make it stop.
“I wish I could just take a vacation and never come back,” he said.
People living in homelessness try to support each other. They adopt street names and a street family. But supporting people is hard when death moves through a community as it does this one.
“I’ve known people for two or three days — I’ve known people for just a weekend — and they end up dying,” J.T. said.
Homeless deaths in San Diego County reached a new, grim high in 2023. At least, 624 homeless people died last year, according to the Medical Examiner’s office. That’s up from 592 in 2022.
The full number of homeless people who die in a given year is almost certainly higher than the Medical Examiner’s count. That’s because the Medical Examiner’s office is not typically involved in cases where people die of natural causes in a hospital. Those deaths are not added to the total.
Homeless deaths have increased at a much greater rate than homelessness, as Voice of San Diego reported last year. In fact, homelessness has not increased nearly as much as most people assume over the past decade.
Between 2019 and 2021, San Diego experienced a massive increase in homeless deaths that has not let up.
Fentanyl is the largest driving force behind the rise. In 2018, the Medical Examiner’s office detected fentanyl in just six overdose cases. In 2022, 269 homeless people died from fentanyl-related overdoses.
“Fentanyl is what made me get clean,” said a man named Mark — many homeless people do not like to share their full ‘government names’ — as he was sitting outside the city’s homeless shelter at Golden Hall. He was a heroin addict when fentanyl started to hit the streets. “I got tired of watching people die.”
Mark still smokes pot and drinks, he said, but the specter of fentanyl terrified him enough to get him off hard drugs.
The greatest number of deaths after overdoses and natural causes is also alarming: motor vehicle deaths.
A county spokesman did not return multiple inquiries seeking clarification on these deaths. Were these people who died in motor vehicle accidents? Were they struck by motor vehicles? Chuck Westerheide, the spokesman, did not say.
Homicides and suicides also increased considerably in 2023.
Last year, the San Diego City Council passed a controversial homeless camping ban. The law made it easier for cops to force homeless people to move their tents off city sidewalks in certain areas. Cops broke up some of the largest encampments downtown and, by and large, those encampments have not returned.
Some councilmembers who supported the law said it was necessary, in part, because of the increased death rate among homeless people. The law went into effect in late July. So far, it does not appear to have seriously curbed the death rate.
On the street, people sometimes talk about others who died because they gave up. There is a related medical term: “deaths of despair.” Deaths of despair include overdose, suicide and alcohol-related causes. These deaths accounted for 64 percent of the total in 2023.
During the day, Golden Hall residents hang out on the west side of the building, along a structure they call “the wall.” A group of friends stood there in the sunshine on Wednesday. They were in a cheerful mood, making jokes, talking about their plans to start a podcast about life on the streets. They had all been together at Golden Hall for about a year. During that time, they guessed they’d seen at least 50 people overdose – many of them right there on the sidewalk.
“You see everything down here,” Mark said.
“Once I walked up on a guy who looked like he was having a heart attack. He was on the phone with 911 and I took the phone,” another man named Andy said. “They told me to clear his airway and give him compressions. I must have pressed too hard, because I heard a crunch and the guy groaned. Fortunately, the ambulance showed up right after that.”
“It sucks making friends here,” a man named Ricky said. “I’ve made three really good friends who died.”
I think we are going to see a major spike this year due to the Camping Ban enforcement. It is well known that there are not enough Shelter Beds for the street homeless. The Camping Ban has the police moving the homeless off their camping spots on the street on short notice. As a result, most times they lose their things needed for survival in the cold and wet winter. Tents, tarps, coats, sleeping bags, blankets and more are all thrown out during the forced moves. This leaves the homeless for face the cold night, possibly with rain, with only the clothes on their back. Some of the older, sick homeless do not survive.
Yes, we are clearing the streets, we are killing people to do so.
Are you happy now?
How do most of these homeless people die? More than 60% overdosed. These are not people who fell on hard times. These are active drug users. I resent that shelters are now being used to house active drug users. Are we also supposed to look the other way when they create “neighborhoods” on our traffic medians? It’s time to stop letting drug users obliterate our city and way of life.
We are constantly reading about traffic and railroad deaths, but the reporting never, so far as I’ve noticed, informs readers that the people killed are homeless. Yet, what other group walks in front of cars on our freeways and in front of an oncoming train.
Additionally, there is no reporting, even in this report, of the trauma experienced by those people who collide with a homeless person on the freeway or the engineers of a train. And, what about their financial losses.
In short too often the full scale of the impacts of homelessness are ignored and those who enable this group are, at the same time, often lauded.
There are clear answers to homelessness but society has over decades of political leadership that has led to one-party government shut down those programs and substituted ludicrous plans such as Housing First that is one reason for the growth in the homeless population and homeless death rates.
Enabling mental health problems that lead to substance abuse and overdose deaths is inhumane.
I agree, the authors of this blog are responsible for many homeless deaths because of the asinine policies they push.
Released 1 week after the election.
Looking for my niece Cheyenne Mills 25 homeless drug addiction. Just wondering if she is alive or if she had an overdose???