When it comes to Australia’s homelessness deaths, we can’t change what we don’t measure

A tent city set up by people experiencing homelessness in Fremantle, WA. Article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights says: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing.’ Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP

If you are reading this in Australia, your odds of living to the ripe old age of 81 are good, as that is now the average age of death in the country. Australia now has the third highest life expectancy globally. But this average masks a sobering three-decade gap in life expectancy for people who have experienced homelessness.

This is a disturbing but largely invisible national crisis, with Guardian Australia’s investigation revealing an average age of death of a mere 44 years after examining 10 years’ worth of coronial death notifications where homelessness was documented. These deaths are the tip of an iceberg as they only include those notified to a coroner and where homelessness or itinerant living was mentioned. From our tracking of deaths among people who have experienced homelessness in Perth, we know the true death toll is much higher. Since 2017 our research team based at the University of Notre Dame has recorded and verified more than 600 deaths in Perth alone, with an average age of 49 years.