Events in New London and Norwich Friday evening will mark National Homeless Persons Memorial Day.

The event is held each year on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, to remember nearly three dozen homeless or previously homeless people who have died over the past year in the two cities.

In Norwich, the memorial event, sponsored by the Norwich staff of Generations Health Centers, will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the St. Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen, 120 Cliff St., Norwich. The ceremony will honor eight people, two who died this year while homeless and six who were previously homeless but were housed at the times of their deaths.

The Norwich event will include a fundraiser dinner for St. Vincent de Paul Place that will include garlic roasted chicken, rice pilaf, broccoli and Caesar salad. Tickets are $7 each or two for $10. To purchase tickets or for more information, call Kathy Lopez at (860) 885-1308, ext. 3012 or Jillian Corbin at (860) 889-7374.

Donations of nonperishable food items will be accepted in advance or at the door at the event.

In New London, the event will begin with a 6:15 p.m. service in the memorial garden outside St. James Episcopal Church at 76 Federal St. There will be a reading of names of the homeless or formerly homeless who have died recently.

There are 21 names on the list this year — more names than in any year in the past decade. The list includes the name of Libro Mei, a 36-year-old man who died of an apparent drug overdose. His body was discovered on the grounds of the former Edgerton School in May. Three people were arrested for driving him to the site and dumping his body.

Mei had worked as a commercial fisherman but also had been drifting between friends’ couches and the Homeless Hospitality Center in the weeks before his death, friends said. He had been in and out of treatment programs and at times appeared to be working hard to stay clean, they said.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual report on homelessness released recently said 3,976 people in Connecticut experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2018, a 17.4 percent increase from the previous year. Most homeless were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, while 581 were listed as “unsheltered.”

Chronic or long-term homelessness among individuals dropped 18.8 percent from 2017 numbers, the report stated, but the number of families with children experiencing homelessness increased 41 percent since 2017.

c.bessette@theday.com

Day staff writer Greg Smith contributed to this report.

g.smith@theday.com