CALIFORNIA
Column: He died Sunday on a West L.A. sidewalk. He was homeless. He is part of an epidemic
Coroner’s officials remove the body of a homeless man found on the sidewalk at Massachusetts Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles on Sept. 1, 2019.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
By STEVE LOPEZCOLUMNIST
SEP. 4, 2019
10 AM
The balding, middle-aged man was facedown on a flattened piece of cardboard, arms at his side, a small pool of blood near his mouth. He wore bluejeans, his feet were bare, and headset buds were still in his ears.
Two LAPD officers who responded to the emergency call from a passerby had pitched a white pop-up tent around the body, which lay on the sidewalk of Massachusetts Avenue between Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405 Freeway in West Los Angeles.
It was Sunday morning, the middle of Labor Day weekend, three-quarters of the way into a year in which deaths of homeless people in Los Angeles County are on a record-setting pace to top 1,000, according to preliminary numbers from the county coroner.
Coroner’s investigator Adrian Munoz removes medicine, a sleeping bag and a backpack belonging to a homeless man who was found dead on a piece of cardboard on a Los Angeles sidewalk.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“I hope this will be another wake-up call that urgency is the order of the day,” said County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who called it incomprehensible and unacceptable that dying on the streets has become routine.
On average, nearly three homeless people are dying daily in the county, nearly double the rate of deaths by homicide. Illness, addiction, accidents, suicide and the ravages of being unsheltered are among the primary causes of death.
“We know the research says that people who are what’s called rough sleepers, those who are living on the streets and not in a shelter or a car, are 10 times more likely to die than the regular population,” said Dr. Susan Partovi, citing a study in Boston. Partovi has been administering to homeless people in Los Angeles for years.
The average age of the first 666 homeless people who died in L.A. County as of Aug. 25 was 51, well below the county’s average life expectancy of roughly 80. Homeless people are dying on sidewalks, along riverbeds, and in tents, parks, shelters, vehicles, motels and hospitals.
You can call it a travesty. An emergency. A call to action.
It is all those things.
An LAPD officer, right, secures the scene as coroner’s investigator Adrian Munoz prepares to remove the body.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Bodies are being found in virtually every corner of the county, a grim consequence of the intensifying epidemic of homelessness. In 2012, 407 homeless people died in L.A. County. The number has gone up sharply every year, to last year’s record high of 921.
This year, the toll hit 525 in just the first six months — 88 more than over the same period a year earlier — and the pace has been steady since then.
New York City has roughly the same number of homeless people as Los Angeles County, but has moved tens of thousands of them into shelters. Despite much harsher weather, New York recorded 292 homeless deaths in 2018, fewer than one-third the Los Angeles total.
“We’re seeing homeless deaths in areas where we didn’t see them five or 10 years ago,” said Brian Elias, chief of investigations for the county coroner’s office.
Elias’ boss, Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Jonathan Lucas, said his office is stepping up its analysis of trend lines and causes of death to help address the crisis. |
