ANALYSIS: Homeless people are invisible victims of Covid-19

The uncounted: People who are homeless are invisible victims of Covid-19 No one seems to have any idea how many homeless people have died, despite extraordinarily detailed statistics on the nation's Covid deaths. Usha Lee McFarling STAT

LOS ANGELES — They are the invisible victims of Covid-19, marginalized not just in life, but also in death.

Despite the extraordinarily detailed statistics that parse the ages, races, and comorbidities of the nation’s more than 500,000 Covid deaths, no one seems to have any idea how many homeless people have died.

One attempt to track all U.S. Covid-19 homeless deaths through official records turned up just 373. “It’s absolutely a vast undercount,” said Katherine Cavanaugh, a consumer advocate with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. “Housing status is not on any major Covid dashboard.”

That so few Covid deaths have been recorded among homeless populations — far fewer than had been expected early on — has led many to describe the innate social distancing of homelessness as a kind of perverse advantage against the virus. Headlines asked if homeless populations had “dodged a catastrophe.”

While the idea makes intuitive sense, it may not be true. Many outbreaks occurred in homeless shelters and unsheltered people have been infected as well. One study showed the mortality rate of homeless people in New York was 75% higher than the city’s rate. It’s just that an accounting of these deaths, like homeless people themselves, seems to have slipped through the cracks. ...

What cities here in California, and across the nation, do know is that homeless deaths rose sharply in March 2020, just as the pandemic arrived. They tripled in San Francisco this spring, and this year rose 32% in Los Angeles and 54% in Washington D.C. Yet many experts remain puzzled because few of these excess deaths were officially attributed to Covid-19....