If you are reading this in Australia, your odds of living to the ripe old age of 81 are good, as that is now the average age of death in the country. Australia now has the third highest life expectancy globally. But this average masks a sobering three-decade gap in life expectancy for people who have experienced homelessness.
This is a disturbing but largely invisible national crisis, with Guardian Australia’s investigation revealing an average age of death of a mere 44 years after examining 10 years’ worth of coronial death notifications where homelessness was documented. These deaths are the tip of an iceberg as they only include those notified to a coroner and where homelessness or itinerant living was mentioned. From our tracking of deaths among people who have experienced homelessness in Perth, we know the true death toll is much higher. Since 2017 our research team based at the University of Notre Dame has recorded and verified more than 600 deaths in Perth alone, with an average age of 49 years.
While similar life expectancy gaps have been observed among homeless populations in the UK and the US, this provides no absolution of shame for Australia. It is not just the number and average age of deaths that is shocking. It is also that many of these premature deaths occurred in circumstances created by systemic failures across........