When low-income Londoners die, who pays for the funeral?

A London funeral director is calling out city hall for not keeping up with the rising costs of services for people who died without the money to pay for one themselves – a segment of the industry he says has grown sharply.

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Joe O’Neil, owner of a William Street funeral home, says the amount city hall funds for what he calls “social service funerals” hasn’t risen for roughly 14 years, leaving the businesses to essentially subsidize funerals for the less fortunate.

“Not everyone (in the industry) is providing full services at that rate because they can’t afford to,” he said. “With what the city is paying us, we’re actually losing money.

“Who else is providing a product or services to the city at the same price as 14 years ago without an increase?”

O’Neil says the city offers two types of funerals:

• A basic cremation or burial with no service. The city pays a base rate of $1,420.
• The second includes an hour-long visitation and then a service followed by a burial or cremation that costs the city about $3,600.

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London city hall paid out more than $400,000 for burials, funerals and cremations for about 318 social assistance recipients and 120 more low-income Londoners in 2023, officials said in an email.

But the rates the city pays are just not enough to cover the funeral expenses, O’Neil said.

Officials with the City of London said they make every effort to support those on social assistance with access to the “necessary benefits they are entitled to.”

Brett Denning is a director for the Ontario Funeral Service Association whose family owns several funeral homes across Southwestern Ontario, including in Strathroy. He says every municipality funds funerals differently.

But their agreement with Middlesex County states that every year costs should be increased based on the consumer price index, he said.

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“That hasn’t happened,” he said. “For 17 years we have continued to serve families the way they deserve to be served with less and less and less.”

The funeral home receives about $3,700 for a traditional service, including visitation, embalming or cremation, a casket or urn, facilities, transportation services and staff, Denning said.

“It gets more difficult each year where funeral homes are expected to essentially subsidize these funerals,” he said. “What we like to see across the entire province for the folks who don’t have the funds is to have the ability to have a respectful disposition.”

Middlesex County officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last few years the number of funerals O’Neil has held that are being covered by the city has spiked, he said.

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“Post-pandemic, I’m doing 10 times more social security funerals now than I used to do five or six years ago,” he said.

O’Neil said the dramatic increase in funerals funded by the city “is a convergence of things,” including economic factors, especially among newcomers, welfare abuse, families refusing to fund funerals and homelessness.

“We have more death on the streets, which I have never seen before,” he said. “One weekend, I had four overdoses.”

On a different week during the first year of the pandemic he handled more deaths by overdose than the entire year prior, O’Neil said.

[email protected]

@HeatheratLFP

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