New Oregon law mandates counties track homeless deaths, but Lane County won't give details

With carefully compared notes and heavy hearts, activists, homeless service providers and other concerned community members made their own unofficial list of nearly 40 people who died while experiencing homelessness in Lane County in 2021.

The total is significant — but likely still an undercount.

Troubling stories across the state of deaths either attributed to or aggravated by people's lack of housing are not uncommon. But if the death took place in one of the 35 Oregon counties outside of Multnomah, there has been no requirement to track who dies while homeless.

Policymakers hope future years will provide a clearer picture of the fatal impacts of homelessness.

Senate Bill 850 requires all Oregon counties to track how many die without shelter. It went into effect Jan. 1.

The law didn’t attach any additional funding or staffing for county medical examiners to accomplish this count, but several counties, including Marion, say they have begun to count with little additional effort.

Although the law went into effect earlier this month, Lane County’s Death Investigations Division won’t comment on whether it's implementing it yet.

Leading the way

Multnomah County’s yearly report on people who died while homeless, called “Domicile Unknown,” began when leadership from Street Roots — a Portland-based homeless advocacy newspaper — put pressure on local government to track the deaths that often are invisible to the public eye.

Street Roots’ executive director at the time, Israel Bayer, was able to rally the help of then-county commissioner and now Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury. Along with Tri-County Health Officer Paul Lewis, the team was able to adjust the county’s practices to produce the report.

Since December 2010, Multnomah County deputy medical examiners have noted which people may have been homeless at the time of death. They make multiple attempts to identify the residence of people who died, through scene investigation and interviews with family and friends.

The total is still thought to be an undercount, but even the incomplete number gives the county an idea of what risks are posed to those who live on the streets.

How Senate Bill 850 came to be

In November 2020, Jill Koehmstedt died in Salem at 36 because of a MRSA infection and left three young children behind. She's one of the many who died in the state while experiencing homelessness.

“She had a health issue that was really quite mild, but because it needed treatment and she didn't receive that treatment, she died,” State Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, said. “There was really no accounting for people who died (while homeless).”

Related: Woman's body found at camp under Market Street overpass marks latest in homeless deaths in Salem

Patterson and state Rep. Winsvey Campos, D-Aloha, were the chief sponsors of Senate Bill 850. Lane County legislators Sen. James I. Manning Jr. and Rep. Marty Wilde also supported the bill.

The law now requires medical examiners to include whether a person who died was experiencing homelessness in their report.

"Not that we just want to sit around and count people as they die, don't get me wrong,” Patterson said. “But what are the ways that we can proactively — as we're seeking to house everybody — address their health needs to prevent deaths?”

The hope is that the whole state will have the kind of data Multnomah has been working with for more than a decade. Patterson said she wasn’t sure if the data collected will be available at the end of the year or sooner.

"This was one of my first couple of bills, so we're going to have to take a good look at this over this year. Because obviously, oversight is part of the work, too," Patterson said. “If need be, we'll have to do a fix to it in 2023.”

Some counties feel prepared

Because the reporting system medical examiners already use statewide has a clickable option on the report when someone who died doesn’t have an address, some counties are already in the habit of tracking when people die while homeless.

Nothing about the process of investigating deaths has changed in Deschutes and Crook counties, said Dr. Jana VanAmburg, the county medical examiner for both.

“As far as I can tell, the only way it might impact us is that the data will be more closely monitored,” VanAmburg said.

It’s a similar story in Marion County.

"It really wasn't a huge change for us,” said Robert Anderson, Marion County’s chief medical-legal investigator. “It was a training thing more or less for me to make sure my investigators asked the questions.”

Anderson expects that at the end of the year, Marion County will be able to confidently estimate how many died while homeless. He added that investigating whether a person was homeless might be additional work for counties that deal with more cases.

But for his office, “it's just another button to click and another question to ask.”

Polk County couldn’t be reached in time for publication.

Lane County won’t say

In August 2019, Annette Lorraine Montero, 57, was run over and killed by a garbage truck in Eugene. She had nowhere to go and was sleeping in a parking lot. Shortly after the incident, Lane County officials told The Register-Guard that its current process of counting homeless deaths produced “a real incomplete picture.”

But the county didn't make changes to the process. At the time, they said it was up to the state to provide the resources needed.

From 2019: County wants state to instigate homeless death count

Lane County has one medical examiner from the state, aided by staff from the county's district attorney's office. County officials said in 2019 the medical examiner didn't have the bandwidth for additional tasks.

In an interview with The Register-Guard this month, the county’s Death Investigations Division wouldn’t comment on whether it's begun tracking homeless deaths.

Activists and advocates are eager for the information.

Twice activist and CAHOOTS crisis worker Chelsea Swift organized local vigils commemorating those who died while living without shelter. Many of the lives mourned at these events Swift knew personally through her work with CAHOOTS.

Previous coverage: Activists gather for candlelight vigil to honor those who died while homeless in 2020

An official count of lives lost could inspire housed poor and working-class people to demand meaningful change, she said, including social service workers and health care workers who have an intimate understanding of the lives lost through their work.

"I find myself thinking about the AIDS epidemic and the thousands and millions of deaths of a really stigmatized group," Swift said. "As those numbers grew, the organizing within the gay community and its allies and the solidarity that came from the rapid, rapid increase of those numbers that took place is what brought us state action and change in healthcare that we still benefit from 30 years later."

She’s more pessimistic about what the number would mean for politicians.

“We (service providers and activists) try to share the patterns and the huge, huge deficits of services that we see and those aren’t listened to, or acted upon, by the state either. We tend to hear ‘A study needs to be done' or 'We need to analyze our needs,' ” Swift said. "Perhaps having data like that built-in removes a little bit of that strategy of delaying action from the government.”

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Marty Wilde's name.

Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to get unlimited access and support local journalism.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Is Lane County complying with law tracking homeless deaths? 'No comment'