Every year, people die in the ACT while homeless, or after having experienced homelessness. Yet we do not know how many. Unlike many other vulnerable groups or high-risk settings, the death of a person experiencing homelessness in the ACT is not automatically reported to the Coroner, so these deaths are rarely investigated, recorded or counted. The evidence we do have is stark: people experiencing homelessness in Australia die, on average, around three decades earlier than the general population, and national data shows this small population accounts for a disproportionate share of preventable deaths from suicide, accidental poisoning and untreated illness each year.
ACT Shelter’s briefing – Counting the Uncounted – sets out the case for change. It calls on the ACT Government to amend the Coroners Act 1997 so the death of a person experiencing homelessness becomes a reportable death, to commit to resolving the practical questions this raises, and to publish homelessness mortality data annually — making the ACT the first jurisdiction in Australia to systematically count these deaths. Read the full briefing below.