Burying a body is incredibly expensive. For most financially insecure people, they're simply not an option and for unclaimed bodies, it's rare for money to be available for a burial. It can cost between $3,000 to $7,000 to bury a body, and according to WWLP, the Department of Transitional Assistance only reimburses funeral directors $1,100. Plus, there's a catch: "In order to qualify for the reimbursement, [funeral directors] can't spend more than $3,500, which barely covers the cost of a basic burial."
The Atlantic reports that in the United States, "only 14 states devote money to funeral costs for unclaimed bodies." And since these costs were already barely enough to cover a single burial, they're nowhere close to being enough to cover "the actual volume of bodies that coroners and funeral directors face." Some states, like West Virginia, ran out of funds two years in a row, largely due to its overwhelmingly high rate of overdose deaths due to the opioid epidemic.
Unfortunately, space runs out pretty quickly. According to the Archdiocese of Chicago, in 2012, the Archdiocese of Chicago donated 300 graves from Mount Olivet Cemetery to the Cook County Morgue, which had become overcrowded. And in Chicago, unclaimed remains can be held as long as two years before a burial can be arranged.
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