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New York City’s shelter system knew him. He had been treated in a hospital two days prior. Yet, he was found frozen to death on a Queens park bench. This 52-year-old homeless man was one of at least 13 victims who died last week after below-freezing temperatures hit New York City. This has been New York City’s harshest winter in eight years, pushing residents and city resources past their limits. As one of the cities with the highest homeless populations, longstanding policies must be bolstered to avoid future tragedies concerning New York City’s most vulnerable.
The struggles of the homeless are closer than we might realize. Many New Yorkers and NYU students have grown familiar with the crowd of unhoused residents who gather daily around Washington Square Park and at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station. For more than a decade, the station has acted as an informal shelter, where the homeless gather to seek warmth and refuge. The continued presence of this makeshift refuge in the station speaks to how much homelessness is embedded in our everyday lives, and yet has become easy to ignore in the face of complicity. But when temperatures dip into the negatives for days on end, ignoring those in need leads to death.
In response to the freezing temperatures and the heightened risk for unhoused New Yorkers, the city has been under Code Blue protocol, which ensures no one seeking shelter is denied. Emergency services and overnight outreach have been increased to transport as many people off the streets as possible, hoping to prevent New Yorkers from falling victim to the cold. Yet, even shelters aren’t always a safe haven.
The city’s homeless shelters have a reputation for being overcrowded and threatening, which helps to explain how some prefer taking their chances in the streets. Many individuals at shelters, particularly women and survivors of domestic violence, reported feeling unsafe during their stays in previous winter storms — worried about theft, attacks from other residents and the general insecurity of a shelter system woefully lacking capacity for residents. Mayor Mamdani’s decision not to force homeless people into shelters may have drawn criticism, but it also made sure they were not forcefully subjected to the dangers of this faulty shelter system.
Despite emergency protocols, the city remains unprepared to protect its most vulnerable residents when it is most urgent, as seen by these recent fatalities. The crowd at Broadway-Lafayette Street persisted as classes resumed on Tuesday following the weekend storm, proof that the city’s resources and efforts clearly aren’t reaching everyone who needs them.
These deaths are not the result of a single administration, but from years of faulty policy and institutional neglect for the homeless. While Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces one of his first major tests in his administration, this winter crisis exposes what was left behind by former mayor Eric Adams: policies that emphasized removal and optics over stability and assistance.
Under Adams, the city prioritized encampment sweeps and removal of unhoused residents from the subway, all without providing an avenue for permanent shelter. In 2023, it was found that 95% of people ended up back on the streets after being swept away, often within days. Many claim Mamdani’s reversal of these encampment sweeps is a safety issue, neglecting the real safety concern that comes with displacing people exposed to the freezing temperatures. It is better to stop the constant cycle of displacement which forces the homeless to rebuild their lives on the streets, rather than keep the death cycle for the cruel reward of being able to more easily ignore the homeless.
While many want to see the streets cleaner and safer — free from encampment debris and drug paraphernalia across the city — we cannot allow this desire to overpower our humanity. Some look away as they pass by, others spare change when they can or when they can be bothered. Others film and post their situation online, turning struggle into exploitative viral content. These individuals are subjected to online humiliation without their knowledge, while the support they need remains out of reach. Why do we not care about the plight of others when we see them struggling right in front of our eyes? Have we whittled their lives down to just an everyday inconvenience? When did we stop treating them as the friends and neighbors they used to be?
This city has been endlessly romanticised through shows like “Friends” and “Sex and the City,” giving a view of the city through rose-colored glasses, masking the reality of life on the streets. The real problem isn’t the homeless, it’s the systems that have left fellow New Yorkers on the streets. A city that fails its most vulnerable fails everyone.
We have yet to see the complete effects of Mamdani’s new policies for combating homelessness, however they hold more promise and care than those in place prior. Addressing the homeless crisis will take time, resources, unrelenting effort and a little compassion and patience from the rest of us. In the meantime, the city has a responsibility to ensure no New Yorker is left to freeze to death on the streets. In the Mayor’s own words, let us work towards replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” restoring a sense of community that has deteriorated in recent years and ensuring no crisis is faced alone. Only then will New York be stronger than any storm.
Contact Nancy Lama at [email protected].