When a homeless person dies, for whatever reason, they often have no family or friends who can claim their body to ensure they receive a proper funeral and burial. As tragic as that is, this is a common scenario which happens much too often. There are many reasons that a person may become homeless in the first place, but for many, it’s because they don’t have the same support systems (i.e. family and friends) that other people have and this is why so many fall through the cracks of society and end up living on the streets.

So where do all the unclaimed bodies of homeless people go after they die? Are they all buried in some type of designated cemetery just for them, or is their final resting place no different than others? While this topic may be a bit too morbid for some, it’s a valid question to ask and something many do wonder about. The truth of the matter is that when a homeless person dies, a number of different things may happen to the body if it remains unclaimed.

Locating Next of Kin
The first thing that normally happens after a homeless person dies is an official search for next of kin. Social workers are often tasked with this role and they will normally make a serious effort to find family members who can claim the body and ensure a proper funeral. Sometimes they will even look for friends of the deceased if it’s established that a homeless person has no family or if the family members can’t be located.

If nobody comes forward to claim the body and if nobody who cares about the deceased can be found, then the health department or other responsible department will then have to either bury the body, donate it, or hold it until a decision is made on what to do with it. ¹⁾Castex GM. Social workers’ final act of service: respectful burial arrangements for indigent, unclaimed, and unidentified people. Soc Work. 2007;52(4):331-339. doi:10.1093/sw/52.4.331

The same is normally true in cases where a family member or next of kin is found, but they simply can’t afford to pay for a proper burial. Those who die with no way to fund their own funerals are normally buried alongside those who go unclaimed.

Mass Graves
In most cases, the sad reality is that the unclaimed bodies of homeless people are normally buried in mass graves in most countries. These types of graves are referred to as “potter’s fields”. In the United States, it’s often left up to the local or state governments to decide what to do with the bodies. There is normally some type of reasonable period of time that they will wait, such as 30 days, for a body to be claimed before it’s buried.

The method of burial can vary, depending on the state or county. Los Angeles, for example, normally cremates unclaimed bodies and then buries the ashes in a mass grave with a formal ceremony. They normally hold the cremated ashes for a few years before they actually bury them, because this allows enough time for them to collect more and bury them all at once. The number of bodies buried at one time is often in the thousands.

In New York City, bodies are put into wooden coffins, which are then stacked together in mass graves on Hart Island. This island made the news at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York because it was reported that this is where unclaimed COVID-19 victims’ bodies would be taken to. Smaller counties or cities may sometimes find ways to fund proper funerals and individual burials for the unclaimed bodies. For larger cities, this is rarely an option since they simply don’t have the funding to do this for the larger amount of unclaimed bodies or those from the indigent which they’re responsible for.

Bodies Donated to Medical Schools
In some cases, unclaimed bodies are donated as cadavers to medical schools where students dissect the bodies in order to practice medical procedures on them or to learn about human anatomy. While many of the cadavers come from people who willingly volunteered their own bodies to be used for this purpose after death, a portion of them are the unclaimed homeless that die every year.

However, not all places have programs which allow this and it varies between countries, cities, and counties. In the majority of countries where cadavers are used for medical or scientific purposes, unclaimed bodies make up more of those used than bodies coming from volunteer donors. ²⁾Habicht JL, Kiessling C, Winkelmann A. Bodies for Anatomy Education in Medical Schools: An Overview of the Sources of Cadavers Worldwide. Acad Med. 2018;93(9):1293-1300. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000002227 ³⁾Gangata H, Ntaba P, Akol P, Louw G. The reliance on unclaimed cadavers for anatomical teaching by medical schools in Africa. Anat Sci Educ. 2010;3(4):174-183. doi:10.1002/ase.157

In the United States, some states or counties have programs similar to this, while others, such as New York, have forbid it. In the UK, it’s been legal for unclaimed bodies to be dissected in this way since 1832, when the Warburton Anatomy Act was passed.⁴⁾Ghosh SK. Human cadaveric dissection: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era. Anat Cell Biol. 2015;48(3):153-169. doi:10.5115/acb.2015.48.3.153

Unclaimed Veterans
In the case of unclaimed veterans, there are many different factors involved in how they’re buried and where. Of course, this all depends on the country where the veteran served and where they died. In the USA, homeless or poor veterans who die unclaimed or without money to pay for their funerals will normally receive a proper burial after the local government goes through all the steps they need to.

First, they need to be aware that the person actually is a veteran. Medical examiners, coroners, or social workers will normally try to establish this when seeking out the next of kin. If a person is determined to be a veteran, they will normally be buried in a veteran’s cemetery, either in a plastic urn or a metal coffin, which the Department of Veterans Affairs will normally reimburse for.

The Department of Veterans Affairs can also sometimes reimburse for the costs of transporting the deceased and burying them. It may be possible for responsible parties to be reimbursed for a tombstone as well if a veteran is buried in a private cemetery. The local government department or administrator who handles unclaimed burials must normally file forms through the VA Department for all of this to establish if the deceased person is eligible for this type of assistance.⁵⁾Fact Sheets and Brochures – National Cemetery Administration

Finding an Unclaimed Gravesite
After a homeless person who goes unclaimed is buried, whether cremated or not, it can be extremely difficult and normally impossible to find their grave. However, keep in mind that unclaimed doesn’t necessarily mean they were buried anonymously or without being identified. While many homeless people do die without any identification on them, the majority of those that go unclaimed are at least identifiable and have had their names and dates of birth recorded in documents before being cremated or buried.

Often times, family members are able to find where they were buried by simply finding out who is in charge of the unclaimed burials in their city. In many cities, it’s the medical examiner who deals with this, but in some places it’s not always clear who might be handling this issue. In New York, for example, it’s the Department of Correction who handle the burials since that’s the department that managers the island where they’re buried.

If you’re looking for a homeless family member or friend who may have died and whose body wasn’t claimed, your best bet is to contact the Department of Social Services in the area where you think they may have died and they can tell you who you’ll need to contact if it’s handled by another entity.