City: Death two weeks ago at Micro-Modular Shelter for homeless Londoners likely unpreventable

The death of a person at London's micro-shelter community earlier this month is believed to have been the result of an overdose.

“It doesn’t appear [to be] the case that there was anything we could have done to prevent this death,” Kevin Dickins, deputy city manager, Social and Health Development told CTV News. “But that doesn’t prevent us from looking at the policies and procedures to see what needs to be tweaked, modified, ramped up, [or] ramped down.”

On May 6, a resident of London’s Micro-Modular Shelter (MMS) was found dead inside their cabin on Cheese Factory Road.

London police have said the death did not appear to be suspicious.

City hall cannot confirm the cause of death, nor the exact time of death, however, Dickins doesn’t challenge stories coming out of the site that the person died during the night of May 4/5, but wasn’t discovered in their cabin until around noon on May 6.

“Without knowing the exact particulars of this individual, or being able to share many details, I think it’s a situation where a person may pass away in their cabin over the course of a night, staff recognized they’ve missed some meals the following day (so) we better check on them in the next morning,” he explained.

Dickins adds that the MMS has support staff on site 24 hours a day and the frequency of cabin checks can vary based on the individual, “I think in this situation, there’s no level of inspection that would have prevented this tragedy that has occurred.”

The city will not confirm that the individual is suspected to have died from a drug overdose, but Dickins points out that residents of the MMS had previously been living in homeless encampments or tents.

“There are people coming into our care that have been living on the streets for years, living in encampments, [and] might have heavy drug dependency,” Dickens said. “We have a fully running Alcoholics Anonymous, [and] Narcotics Anonymous right on site at the micro-modular shelter. We’ve got a number of people who’ve gone into recovery services, and they’re on medication to curb their opioid addiction. So yes we’ve had a tragedy, but we’re also seeing well over a dozen success stories so far of people getting into treatment and recovery services on site.”

Last October, city council approved spending up to $7 million to construct and operate the shelter for homeless Londoners until April 2027.

The community opened in February, and includes 60 modular huts (50 single occupancy, 10 double occupancy) that can house up to 70 people.