At least four unhoused people died due to the cold in 2025, according to Connecticut’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME). However, there are several other suspected cold weather-related deaths of unhoused people that are under investigation.
Several homeless service providers in Connecticut confirmed more than 140 unhoused residents died this year, whether by natural causes, exposure or drug-related incidents.
It’s difficult to get reliable data on unsheltered individuals, Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill said.
“We've started in the last couple of years now, we have a thing in our system where we have a check-off box that anyone who's suspected to be homeless, we check it off so then we can go back and look and to get an idea of the people that we see. But it's not something that, for example, is a field on the standard death certificate,” Gill said.
Three of the four confirmed weather-related deaths of unhoused individuals this year were extenuated by alcohol or drug overdoses, with causes of death being listed as “hypothermia” along with “acute Fentanyl intoxication,” according to OCME data.
There’s no protocol to document the death of a person experiencing unsheltered homelessness, other than the OCME making a note when relatives or associates can confirm someone was unhoused.
The circumstances of someone’s death can also impact how their housing status is tracked, Gill said.
“If someone is, for example, living in a hotel because they don't have a house, but they're paying for the hotel themselves, that's not considered kind of homeless,” Gill said. “A lot of those can kind of fall through the cracks because of some of the definitional issues.”
In recent years, OCME began keeping closer track of the housing status of people whose deaths they investigated.
But no specific trends in housing status or deaths of unhoused individuals were noticed, Gill said.
“People don't usually think about us as this, but we are always in the business of trying to figure out how to prevent deaths,” Gill said. “We see all these deaths, and what we want to really learn from them is how we can prevent these in the future. So, if we can find something about on domicile people you know, maybe the certain risks.”
Often, confirming whether a deceased person was unhoused comes down to their relationships with local homeless service providers, Paradis said.
“If there's no service provision in a community, if there's not a shelter, if there's not a drop-in center, if there's not a homeless response person, then there is not that connection between some,” Paradis said.
In mid-December there were two deaths of unhoused individuals in Stamford and another in New Haven. Getting more reliable data may become an issue for the state legislature, Paradis said.
“I do believe that this is a legislative issue and a legislative matter where we need to ensure that [police] and municipalities and service providers and state departments are all reporting this and we are able to have a place in which this data is open and accessible,” Paradis said.
