Seventeen New Yorkers have died outdoors in recent weeks amid freezing temperatures, which are expected to dip again this weekend. Local homeless advocates urged the city Friday to flood the streets with extra outreach workers.

This story was updated after publication to include new information from the mayor’s office about the city’s emergency preparedness plans.

Seventeen people have died outdoors in New York City over the last two weeks amid a stretch of unusually cold weather—and with frigid temperatures on the way again, homeless advocates are urging the city to deploy more outreach teams to bring unhoused people inside.

“With this weekend’s wind chills expected to fall well below zero, the City must immediately bolster measures to prevent further loss of life,” The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint statement Friday.

This should include, “flooding the streets with additional outreach workers,” the groups said, expanding capacity at warming centers and drop-in sites, and ensuring people can access shelter even if they don’t have a government ID. They also called for “clear communication with all public and private hospitals” about allowing unhoused people to seek refuge in emergency and waiting rooms during what’s known as a “Code Blue” emergency.

“Hospitals must coordinate with the Department of Homeless Services to ensure that no one without a warm place to go is discharged or released to the streets, regardless of health status,” the advocates said. “More lives are at stake.”

Since Jan. 19, the city’s outreach teams have placed more than 1,250 people into shelters or Safe Havens—facilities with fewer restrictions to entry, often preferred by unhoused New Yorkers who’ve had bad experiences with traditional shelters and are reluctant to enter the system. The city opened one such facility early this week in response to the cold, adding 106 single-room occupancy beds in lower Manhattan.

Emergency responders have removed 27 people to hospitals involuntarily, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday. The city also expanded its network of shelter rooms, warming centers and mobile warming buses (locations can be found here) and is trying a new method of including previously homeless New Yorkers on its outreach teams, an effort to build trust.

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Mamdani directly addressed anyone who is still staying outdoors. “These temperatures are too low and too dangerous to survive,” he said. “Please wait out the cold in a safe place with a warm bed.”

The City Council will hold an oversight hearing on Tuesday to examine the administration’s response to the extreme cold. The weather also prompted the Department of Homeless Services to twice postpone its annual HOPE count, in which volunteers canvas the city to track the number of New Yorkers sleeping on its streets.

“It’s tough. It’s freezing out here,” said Rose Williams, who said she’s been street homeless for the last 10 years.

Williams doesn’t trust the shelter system and is reluctant to share her personal information with city workers. She told a City Limits reporter who was accompanying an outreach team that she might consider entering a Safe Haven.

But for now, she’s been sleeping on the E train with a friend, Michael, and the two look out for one another to stay safe. “Everybody says ‘stay warm!’ Where are we going to stay warm at?” Williams said. “It’s nice they say that but … you know.”

Here’s what else happened in housing this week—

ICYMI, from City Limits:

• The cold stretch has also led city tenants to lodge a record-high number of complaints for lack of heat and hot water. During the last week of January, 30,000 tenants called in, the most heat complaints ever recorded in a seven-day period, according to City Limits’ reporting.
• Residents at NYCHA’s Isaacs Houses will start voting next week on what funding model they want for their development.
• More than 700 homes at Beach 41st Street Houses in Rockaway will switch to electric heating and cooling, which officials say will reduce pollution and offer more reliable service than NYCHA’s aging, fossil fuel-powered boilers. 

ICYMI, from other local newsrooms:

• The rise in cold-related deaths prompted calls for Mamdani to revisit his decision to end city “sweeps” of public homeless encampments. But the new mayor told Gothamist that none of the recent fatalities have been people living in encampments, and reiterated his criticism of “sweeps” as ineffective.
• The city is moving ahead with a new rule that critics say will make it harder for people to enter Safe Haven shelters, The City reports.
• How Pinnacle’s bankruptcy “triggered a citywide wave of tenant organizing,” via Jacobin.
• Tenants and advocates are pushing state leaders to increase funding for supportive housing programs in the upcoming budget, WRGB Albany reports.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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