Homeless people in Edmonton are dying at 8 times the rate as pre-pandemic

Chris Jonasson's life started off with great promise.

A talented football player, Jonasson was also kind and stood up for other kids who were being bullied.

"He was incredibly smart. They actually wanted to skip him ahead of grade in school," his sister Lisa Meyer said in an interview this month at her home in Beaumont, Alta.

While he was still in elementary school, two chance tragedies changed Jonasson. He discovered the body of a classmate who had died by suicide, and later his best friend died suddenly.

Meyer believes those unresolved traumas led to her brother's lifelong struggle with drug addiction and an adulthood spent in and out of jail and living on the streets.

Jonasson died on Sept. 28, 2023, after overdosing in the Herb Jamieson Centre — a central Edmonton shelter.

The 51-year-old is one of 302 people with no fixed address who died in Edmonton in 2023.

Data provided by Alberta Justice shows that over the past five years, the number of homeless people who die annually in Edmonton has increased dramatically — from 37 in 2019 to 302 in 2023. In Calgary, that number has risen from 51 to 294 in the same time period. The ministry would not release the causes of death, citing privacy legislation.

Death numbers climbed alongside the overall size of Edmonton's homeless population, which doubled during the pandemic. In late 2019 it was about 1,390, but as of this January it was 2,868, according to Homeward Trust.

Calgary's homeless population decreased by just over four per cent between 2018 and 2022, when a point in time survey counted 2,782 individuals. 

Outreach workers and an Edmonton doctor say that the majority of deaths are the result of drug poisoning, but that people living on the streets have also died of hypothermia, smoke inhalation and burning to death while trying to find ways to keep warm, as well as other medical conditions exacerbated by sleeping rough.

They say the increase in deaths reveals a desperate need for safe consumption options, as well as housing and psychological supports to go along with addiction treatment.

"Our thoughts are with Albertans who have lost loved ones while experiencing homelessness/no fixed address," the justice ministry said in a statement. 

Alberta isn't the only Canadian province reporting an increase in deaths in its homeless population. In British Columbia, the number has risen annually over the past decade, from a few dozen reported deaths to now hundreds per year. In 2022, B.C. saw 342 deaths of people who were homeless.

Toronto, the largest city in Canada, saw steady increases in deaths for several years: from 94 in 2018 to 223 in 2021. In 2022, the total fell to 191. Toronto does not yet have complete data for 2023, but in the first half of the year deaths were continuing to trend downward. 

Battling addiction

By the end of her brother's life, there was nothing his sister could do to reach him, Meyer said.

Jonasson had jobs and places to live on and off, and he did attempt treatment. But after the death of one of his twin sons in 2021, Meyer says he gave up. 

"I couldn't do a damn thing for him," she says, recalling the last years of his life.

As she grieves her brother, she wants to share his story. She said that while rehabilitation and support is available, it remains far too difficult to access for people who are mired in addiction and poverty.

"The bottom line is, nobody should have to live like that," Meyer said.

"Somebody loves them and somebody's heart is broken when they die. And I couldn't help Chris when he was alive. So I just … I want to do whatever I can now."

Meyer shared a copy of her brother's toxicology screen done as part of his autopsy with CBC News. It shows that Jonasson had fentanyl and carfentanil in his blood at the time of his death, as well as methamphetamine, amphetamine, methadone, naloxone, xylazine — often called tranq dope — and two different benzodiazepines. 

Contaminated street drug supply

Fentanyl, carfentanil and other fentanyl analogs are often pointed to as the cause of death when one of Dr. Cameron Barr's patients die.

Barr, a family doctor who works primarily with patients experiencing homelessness out of two central Edmonton clinics, said the province's death numbers are not a surprise.

One in seven of his own patients died between March 2020 and March 2023 — "much more than I've ever had before, and much more than just about any family doctor will see during their career," Barr said in an interview this month.

He said that while the opioid crisis has been ongoing for some time, an increasingly contaminated street drug supply has accelerated overdoses and deaths.

'A cavalcade of failure'

Barr says overburdened hospitals are discharging people with significant mental and physical health issues into homelessness, which can result in worse outcomes.

And he said many of his patients are avoiding shelters because of ongoing shigella and lice outbreaks.

Being homeless has never been safe or easy, but Barr thinks that things are worse than ever. 

He believes offering addictions treatment is not enough, and that significant investment in permanent, supportive housing and psychological support is desperately needed.

"No level of government and no political party has done enough to actually make a substantial dent in the number of people who are suffering with homelessness," he said. 

"It's been just a cavalcade of failure, from top to bottom."

Mapping deaths

As homeless encampments have spread to all corners of Edmonton, so too have the deaths.

Mapping where those deaths happen has become a new focus for Boyle Street Community Services — an agency that provides support services to the city's homeless population.

"A lot of the time, it is our teams that are finding them," said Tyler Gajda, Boyle Street's senior data administrator. "And so there's a lot of active work being done to make sure that we give the overdose response training and naloxone training."

The agency, which offers support services to people who are homeless, began trying to keep track of clients' deaths when the numbers started to climb during the pandemic. 

Many of the death notifications have come from Edmonton police, which also started providing location data in 2023, allowing Gajda to begin building a map showing where deaths happen.

Boyle Street's numbers for 2023 nearly matched the data provided by Alberta Justice — by the end of the year, the agency had tracked 301 of the 302 deaths that the province reported.

Gajda says 128 of those deaths happened in public places around the city. Others were inside facilities or residences.

Internally, the map will help Boyle Street know where to focus outreach efforts and overdose response teams. Gajda said that while many deaths happen in the downtown core, people are dying all over the city, along LRT tracks, in green spaces and in residential areas.

2024 deaths continue to climb

Boyle Street is also planning to make a public version of the map.

"The hope would be that the general public pays attention to that, and it may force people to check on one another — to look out for their neighbours, maybe pick up a naloxone kit," said Lina Meadows, Boyle Street's director of adult programming. 

In the first 78 days of 2024, Boyle Street received 72 death notifications for people who were experiencing homelessness.

Meadows says deaths have continued at an alarming rate, despite the city and Edmonton police's increased efforts to get people out of homeless encampments and into shelters.

Many of those people are being funnelled to a triage centre set up by the province to connect people evicted from camps to support services.

But Meadows says the death data shows how badly more outreach teams and harm reduction resources are needed — Boyle Street is bolstering its own outreach and overdose reversal efforts, but it's not enough to keep up. 

"We know people are dying from opioid poisoning, so we need either access to a safe consumption site or we need more safe supply options for people."