As opioid poisoning has taken an unprecedented toll on the city’s homeless population, Toronto’s Homeless Memorial hit a dark milestone Tuesday, with more names added to its ledger than ever.
Outside the Church of the Holy Trinity, 34 names were read in sequence, including 19 John and Jane Does, and several who died of drug toxicity. Organizers have never before inscribed more than 17 deaths on the memorial at one time, with new names added on the second Tuesday of each month.
Those lives lost included Steven Tibbs, a 28-year-old known as “Littles,” who according to memorial organizer Greg Cook died in November after an overdose on a staircase, and Daisy Warriner, a 24-year-old who It is said that he died of an overdose this month while staying at a shelter hotel.
“There is a certain level of helplessness,” said Cook, a social worker for Sanctuary Ministries. Recently, he sought additional first aid training to try to better respond to overdose seizures that occur repeatedly. “For me, having to repeatedly respond to non-breathing people and having to do CPR and administer naloxone is just an added trauma … We need much more important things to happen that we directly have very little control over.”
Shelters have faced a record spike in drug poisonings this year, with 46 fatal overdoses in September, the same number on record for all of 2020, up from 10 deaths in 2019.
Where shelters would see an average of 26 non-fatal, or reversed, overdoses per month in 2018, the city says, that average had risen to 115 non-fatal overdoses per month by the end of September. Where there was about one drug death per month in Toronto shelters throughout 2018, the average now stands at around four to five deaths for every month that passes.
That rise is reflected in the city’s total shelter deaths, which reached 115 between January and October. That count already far exceeds the record of 74 deaths in 2020, the most since formal monitoring began in 2007, and excludes deaths among those who stayed outdoors. Toronto Public Health counted 143 deaths last year in the general homeless population.
While this year’s public health data is only available through June 30, the agency had already counted 94 deaths among the homeless population, 38 more than in shelters alone. The leading cause of death was drug toxicity, which is responsible for nearly half of those lives.
“It’s the kind of escalation that calls for immediate action by the government, and action that really works,” Cook said, calling for more access to supports like a safer supply of opioid drugs, an idea the federal government has allocated money for. test as a pilot project last August.
While the city has taken some steps to combat the rise in overdoses, including opening a handful of supervised drinking sites within shelters, Cook and other members of a group known as the Shelter and Housing Justice Network want officials to act. more quickly.
The group is lobbying the city to implement the recommendations outlined by its Safe Haven Overdose Action Task Force, recommendations that include expanding overdose prevention sites, creating a leadership position in response to overdose crisis within managing city shelters, support and housing and ensuring stronger training. for the refuge hotel staff.
At Tuesday’s funeral, a woman identified herself as Denise Warriner, Daisy Warriner’s aunt, who said she died while staying in a temporary shelter at the Esplanade Hotel.
“Toronto is in crisis,” he lamented. “We, as a family, were unable to access intensive support for her. There were barricades everywhere. And I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here. “
Warriner spoke about the pain his niece was carrying. He identified Daisy’s mother as Danielle Warriner, who, The Star reported, died last year after an altercation with security guards at Toronto General Hospital. The guards were charged with murder and criminal negligence.
“We are a history of failures of the generational system,” Warriner said, describing Daisy as a sensitive and kind woman, the kind of person for whom the “dangers of the world” weigh heavily.
“I want you to know that they loved Daisy,” he said. “I want you to know that she mattered.”
Reference-www.thestar.com