The circumstances surrounding the 2015 deaths of two homeless Toronto men — Brad Chapman and Grant Faulkner — will be examined jointly in a coroner’s inquest.

One man collapsed in an alley near a hotel and later died. The other perished when his makeshift hut caught fire. Family members and advocates for the homeless hope the inquest will help prevent similar deaths in the future.

The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario announced plans for the public inquest Thursday, and is aiming to conduct the probe by the end of 2017.

The news comes nine months after a Star investigation into the death of Chapman, who was found unconscious outside a downtown hotel one morning in August. The 43-year-old father of three spent a week in Toronto General Hospital deteriorating as a “John Doe” before being identified and removed from life support.

“This news is bittersweet for us,” said Leigh Chapman, Brad Chapman’s sister and a registered nurse who lobbied the coroner for an inquest after the Star’s investigation.

“We hope the inquest will highlight the obvious gaps in the system so that they can be addressed in the public interest, with the aim of preventing similar deaths.”

Unlike Chapman who succumbed during the summer, Faulkner — also a father of three — died on a bitter winter night in a Scarborough field.

On Jan. 13, 2015, fire tore through the makeshift hut Faulkner, 49, was sleeping in behind a business in the McCowan Rd. and Sheppard Ave. area. He had reportedly been using a propane heater for warmth. Firefighters rushed to the scene but could not save him.

Cathy Crowe, a longtime Toronto street nurse and an anti-homeless activist, said she felt “relieved” at the news of the joint inquest.

“It was beginning to feel like homeless people dying didn’t matter,” she said.

Crowe was part of a group, including the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, that has been pushing the coroner to investigate the January 2015 deaths of four homeless men. Faulkner was one of them.

Regional supervising coroner Dr. Roger Skinner will preside over the inquest. Skinner said he could not comment on the matter when reached by the Star.

An inquest is a public hearing conducted by a coroner before a jury of five members of the community. Any recommendations made by the jury at the conclusion of the inquest are not binding, but government policy can often be guided by the recommendations.

The inquest’s terms of reference have yet to be determined.

Central Region Supervising Coroner Dr. James Edwards, who made the announcement, said while the goal is to begin the inquest by the end of 2017, the timing is dependent on how long it takes to assemble all the necessary information, such as autopsy reports, witness statements and expert testimony, if required.

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Edwards said Chapman and Faulkner were chosen because his office had previously investigated their deaths and felt the men illustrated various aspects of homelessness that would aid a jury in developing recommendations.

“It’s a chance to inform the public about members of our city who died in circumstances like (theirs),” Edwards told the Star.

The Star’s investigation in February also found that the provincial government and most municipalities in Ontario do not track homeless deaths fully, or at all. The Star revealed that the coroner’s office has no mandate to track all homeless deaths in the province, and that there is no central provincial registry to which hospitals and shelters can report the deaths of homeless individuals.

Currently, the City of Toronto tracks only shelter-related deaths — homeless individuals who die in city-administered shelters, or shortly after leaving a shelter. Between 2007 and September 2016, Toronto recorded 243 shelter-related deaths.

In March, prompted by the Star’s investigation, Toronto council voted to begin tracking all homeless deaths that occur in the city, not just those that are related to shelters. City staff are still working on developing methods to collect this information and plan to launch a tracking system next year, according to Paul Fleiszer, manager of the surveillance and epidemiology unit at Toronto Public Health.