Almost 1,500 homeless Australians die prematurely every year. This family hopes their loved one’s death won’t be in vain | homelessness

After 11 months of poor sleep, it was the little things that Jamaine liked. He showered whenever he wanted and cooked on his own grill. Locking the front door.

When the 29-year-old came to the social housing in March last year, the time he had to sleep outside was unforgettable. He wasn’t used to a real bed and slept on the couch. At night he kept his shoes on in case he was asked to move on.

Within six weeks of being in his new home, Jamaine, whose last name was withheld for privacy reasons, died.

His caseworkers say the house, one of 137 built in Croydon, Melbourne’s east, last year, arrived too late. They say his death was preventable – and his family doesn’t want it to happen to anyone else.

Jamaine’s untimely death is anything but unique. A Guardian Australia investigation Last year’s tally of 627 homelessness deaths since 2010 showed that rough sleepers died on average 30 years earlier, at an average age of 44.

According to a study by the Australian Institute of Homelessness, nearly 1,500 people die every year Health and Welfare (AIHW) announced last month that the annual death toll rose from 914 in 2012-13 to 1,489 in 2021-22 – a 63% increase.

Advocates say no one who is homeless should be left to die.

Falling through the cracks

Jamaine was a proud Wurundjeri man. He was smart and friendly, an IT guru who could recite unbelievable facts on the spot – the flight paths of rare birds, the history of computers. He wanted to do social work serving Aboriginal people and find a girlfriend.

“He was very intelligent, he built his own computer,” says his uncle Michael. “He was offered a scholarship in high school, but he didn’t take it.”

His Aunt Colleen pauses. She looks at the table.

“He was a really good person,” she says, “everyone loved him.”

Jamaine was the oldest of four siblings. His father was abusive, as were his mother’s partners afterward. His living conditions were never stable and he began drinking in his early 20s. Things got worse after his mother died.

A caseworker said Jamaine had complex post-traumatic stress disorder and drank to escape the past. He told her that it was the only thing he could do to cloud the memories. That he felt worthless.

“He said to me, ‘I’ve seen everything you can imagine,'” Colleen says.

“He would come and stay with us [as a kid] And no one would be there to pick him up on Sunday evening. We used to [him and his siblings] a lot. He remembered everything we did together, we went to the show with them or to Geelong Park.”

The year before his death, Jamaine had given up his rent to go to rehab. After six months, he was sober but had nowhere to go – and became homeless.

Erin, whose last name has been withheld for privacy reasons, works for Anchor, a housing association in Melbourne’s far east. Jamaine landed in front of her door.

“He came out knowing he had nowhere to go,” she says. “We provided him with a tent and helped him set it up.”

“The housing system is broken. It’s not as easy as just coming out of rehab and then saying, ‘Can I have a house?'”

Jamaine began sleeping by a stream in Lilydale, a suburb of Melbourne. But his campsite was often attacked by people and in winter his things became wet and moldy – at night the temperature dropped to 0°C.

Erin and her colleague Tyler, whose last name was also withheld for privacy reasons, I checked on him regularly, brought him new bedding, or went to lunch together. Behind the scenes, they were desperately trying to get him into public housing – but there just weren’t any. Meanwhile, Jamaine had started drinking again and his health was deteriorating.

“He had pancreatitis, so one day we called an ambulance and they came and said, ‘If you hadn’t called, he would have been dead in an hour,'” Erin says.

The new housing development in Croydon was funded by the state government in partnership with Community Housing Ltd and was looking for tenants with low needs, she says – no drug and alcohol problems or untreated mental health issues.

“We fought really hard to get him a place in this social housing development. It was kind of delayed and delayed and delayed,” Tyler says.

The homes were completed in November 2022, five months before Jamaine moved in, but a building shortage required some of the units to be repaired, delaying the process.

“It was probably a lifetime achievement,” Tyler says. “But unfortunately it came too late for Jamaine.”

Jamaine’s body collapsed and he died of liver failure. Tyler said if he had gone from rehab to stable housing, he “would have had a much better chance.”

Colleen and Michael Let’s say “all the wrong things” happened at the wrong time and Jamaine fell through a big gap.

“I had planned to involve him in Indigenous community groups once he was in this unit,” says Michael.

“Then [he] got really sick and never recovered…it was too late.”

“It shouldn’t be a death sentence”

In the last 12 months, Anchor has seen three people it supported die homeless in the Yarra Ranges, says CEO Heidi Tucker.

She says that essentially “there is not enough accommodation” but that services need to work together, particularly in regional areas.

“When a young person becomes homeless or sleeps on other people’s couches, I don’t quite understand why we don’t all consider that an emergency,” she said. “To intervene and get them back on the right track.”

“No one should be left homeless and it certainly should not be a death sentence.”

Despite a recent report from AIHW, there is still limited insight into the number of homeless deaths.

In Perth, Lisa Wood, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, and her research team have launched a project counting deaths among Perth’s homeless population.

This project has recorded a disproportionate number of deaths Indigenous Australians who have experienced homelessness due to the huge over-representation of Indigenous Australians in the homeless population.

“In the last ABS census, 20.4% of homeless people identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, almost six times higher than the proportion of the Australian population who identify similarly,” she said.

“In our most recent published article on deaths among people experiencing homelessness in Perth, 30% of those who died were Aboriginal, and they died on average slightly younger (at 49.1 years) than those who were not Aboriginal (mean age 51, 3 years).”

Wood said late detection of health conditions is common among homeless people, particularly among rough sleepers. This is due to the significant barriers they face in accessing screening and health care, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and adhering to recommended treatments, including, for example, using a refrigerator to store insulin or resting in bed.

“When health care workers reach the locations where people sleeping on the streets are located, it not only increases the likelihood that symptoms or deterioration in health status will be detected earlier, hopefully avoiding some premature deaths, but it contributes also helped restore trust in health services among a population whose previous experiences with… “The health care system has often been traumatic or stigmatizing,” she said.

The Victorian state government declined to comment on whether it will follow the governments of New South Wales and South Australia in considering requiring reporting of homeless deaths.