A former housing minister and a supreme court judge have joined the chief executives of 23 homelessness agencies to call for reforms mandating the reporting of homelessness deaths.
Last month a Guardian Australia investigation revealed that Australians experiencing homelessness were dying at an average age of 44, a shocking life expectancy gap driven by violence, treatable illness and systemic failures across the housing, health and justice sectors.
The revelations have prompted a nationwide push for mandatory reporting of homelessness deaths to the coroner, a reform that would go some way in ending their invisibility.
New South Wales and South Australia have committed to considering such reforms, while advocates in Western Australian and Victoria have urged governments there to follow suit.
The push has now been joined by the former Victorian housing minister Bronwyn Pike, who is now Uniting Vic Tas chief executive, and the former Victorian supreme court judge Kevin Bell KC.
The pair have signed an open letter to the Victorian government, along with 23 homelessness agency chief executives and leaders, urging it to make a minor amendment to the Coroners Act 2008, mandating that the deaths of those experiencing homelessness are reportable.
The letter, led by the Council to Homeless Persons (CHP), calls for the building of 60,000 new social homes in the next 10 years, accompanied by appropriate support services, to prevent further deaths.
It has attracted 200 signatures in total, made up largely of workers across the homelessness sector, local government, justice and other civil society groups.
“On 5 February 2024, Guardian Australia published a series of articles … highlighting the distressing fact that people experiencing homelessness in Australia are dying at an average age of just 44 – more than 30 years younger than the median age of death for the general population,” the letter reads.
“They are dying in circumstances that are often violent. They are dying deprived of the dignity we would want for our own loved ones. And most disturbingly, they are often dying unnecessarily due to easily treatable illnesses and injuries.”
“It’s unacceptable for people to be dying in Victoria because of unsafe living conditions. To respond effectively, our state needs to understand the full scope of this problem – but this is not currently possible as the government does not keep records of homelessness deaths.”
No government in Australia reports on homelessness deaths, putting the nation at odds with the UK and parts of Canada and the US.
The CHP, a peak body for the sector in Victoria, previously wrote to the attorney general, Jaclyn Symes, urging her to adopt the reforms on 5 February.
The government responded late Tuesday saying it would consider the correspondence in “any amendments we propose to make to the definition of ‘reportable death’ under the [coroners act]”.
“As you know, one of the purposes of the Coroners Court is to contribute to the reduction in the number of preventable deaths through the findings of investigations of deaths and in making recommendations,” she said.
“I will also raise this issue with the court for further insight into its role to date in investigating the deaths of homeless people, many of which are subject to death investigations under the existing terms of [the act].”
The CHP chief executive, Deborah Di Natale, said the issue demanded urgent action.
“With such prominent leaders in both the homelessness and justice sectors coming together in making this call, there is now serious momentum behind the push for coronial reporting of homelessness deaths in Victoria,” she said.
“The signatories to our open letter are a powerful coalition of voices uniting to end the unacceptable deaths of people experiencing homelessness. The moral imperative to start preventing these tragic and needless deaths is overwhelming.”
The NSW housing minister, Rose Jackson, was the first state minister to agree to consider mandatory reporting in the wake of Guardian Australia’s investigation.
“We will look at every option to strengthen reporting and monitoring,” she said at the time. “Recommendations from homelessness organisations working on the ground are welcome and encouraged, and we will look at incorporating as much of this work as possible into the [new homelessness] strategy.”
The federal homelessness minister, Julie Collins, said premature deaths of those experiencing homelessness were “completely unacceptable” and pledged to work with the states and territories to improve data collection.
