Photo: Franco Folini CC BY-SA 2.0
As the days get colder and the nights get longer, it’s ever important that we think about our homeless neighbors, including the losses they may be experiencing during what is a difficult time of year for many. The number of people experiencing homelessness over the last year in this country is at the highest rate ever recorded – that’s according to the Point-In-Time count as presented in the 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). As this latest round of data collection shows, California is home to more people experiencing homelessness than any other state (de Sousa and Henry, 2024). California also has the largest share of unsheltered homeless people; more than two thirds of the homeless population in California live outdoors, in vehicles, or in other spaces not meant for habitation.
In the same way that a homeless person experiences day-to-day life very differently than those who are stably housed and with consistent access to food, water, and other basic necessities, homeless people’s relationship to death and dying is special. For people staying on the streets, death is a neighbor and a constant presence. Death or life-threatening injury by way of illness, exposure, substance overdose, homicide, and police violence are persistent threats to people living outdoors.
Many homeless people are intimately familiar with experiencing the death of loved ones in their communities. For people who are homeless and experiencing the death of another homeless person, there are often barriers to being able to access the rituals and processes associated with healthy grieving, such as memorial services, funerals, and burials, which are expensive.
For those mourning the death of a homeless person, that person’s status of homelessness complicates the grieving process. Some people may not even receive timely notice, or notice at all, if a loved one experiencing homelessness has passed on; homeless people’s bodies are sometimes slow to be identified, and their personal records (including key points of contact) are likely to be out of date. The social services network itself seems to treat homeless death as something of an afterthought. While other data surrounding homelessness has been tracked carefully over the years by increasingly sophisticated information management systems, homeless mortality rates and death statistics nationwide are still not collected in any standardized way.
The National Healthcare for the Homeless Council’s Homeless Mortality Data Workgroup is doing important work in this arena by making homeless mortality data more widely available to service providers, policymakers, and anyone who’s curious to learn more (NHCHC, 2025). Greater data transparency serves to visibilize and legitimize homeless death – and thus, homeless life – and strengthens opportunity for people to learn of the deaths of homeless loved ones in a more expeditious and dignified manner.
Creating greater access to ritual, memorialization, and opportunities to express grief and mourning are one critical way to give power back to people whose experiences are often overlooked. Public ceremonies are one way to expand the possibility of honoring fallen members of the homeless community. The National Coalition for the Homeless encourages us to honor Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day events on or around December 21st, the first night of winter. Around this time, many homeless-serving organizations and community groups host the memorial event The Longest Night of the Year to commemorate homeless lives lost in the past year. Events like these that make it a point to honor, love, and grieve our homeless neighbors are critically important, especially as dominant narratives and political bodies would sooner have us forget them.
Contra Costa County is hosting a Homeless Person’s Memorial Event on Friday, December 19th from 11:00 am till 1:00 pm at NAMI Contra Costa’s 40 Voices African American Holistic Wellness and Resource Hub (1020 East Tregallas in Antioch), and online. Please also see our earlier blog post for tips about how your faith congregation can get involved in this and other opportunities for honoring life and loss in the homeless community.
