Whatcom County on pace for record number of deaths among homeless, according to recent data

More people are dying on the streets of Bellingham and Whatcom County, according to those who work closely with people who are without permanent housing.

Greg Winter, executive director of the Opportunity Council, called it a “disturbing, really alarming trend” in remarks to the Whatcom County Council on Tuesday.

Winter said that reports from the Opportunity Council’s Homeless Outreach Team show that deaths of people living on the street are rising sharply. There were 39 deaths in 2020, 46 in 2021, 57 in 2022, and 84 last year.

“This year we’re already on track to go over 100, with 56 documented cases through June,” Winter said. “The rising cost of living, the opioid epidemic — it’s not just the opioid epidemic but the extreme lethality of the drugs that are being proliferated now — the lack of affordable homes and a strained behavioral health system. Each of these crises takes a disproportionate toll on our most vulnerable community members.”

That increase aligns with a national trend. According to Homeless Death Counts , a group that documents deaths among people experiencing homelessness in the United States, at least 20 people experiencing homelessness die every single day in America.

The group’s data shows at least 6,345 unhoused deaths in 2018, 6,362 in 2019, and 7,877 in 2020.

Of the three exposure deaths documented locally since Jan. 1, 2023, one person was homeless, according to the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Homeless people face 3.5 times the mortality rate of those who are housed, after accounting for differences in demographic characteristics and geography, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mortality among the unhoused population is estimated to have risen by about one-third during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Housed individuals saw a similar rise in mortality risk during the same time but the pandemic appears to have affected a larger share of the unhoused population because of their “substantially elevated baseline mortality risk,” the research states.