City Hall is bracing for the cold months after 15 people died on the streets last winter – as Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a plan to change the haphazard way outreach workers responded to 311 calls.
Hizzoner announced a $25 million investment aimed at getting more homeless New Yorkers indoors when temperatures drop as part of a scramble to avoid another deadly cold snap.
The plan revealed by city officials Monday morning seeks to scale up the city’s “Code Blue” response efforts by offering more single-room, easy-to-access shelter options for homeless individuals leery of the city’s system over safety concerns.
“What we found in a lot of what we inherited was an approach that doesn’t meet the level of scale when it comes to the kind of winter that we had,” Mamdani told reporters outside of a Sanitation Department salt shed Monday.
The city issues a “Code Blue” response whenever temperatures dip below freezing between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. — waiving capacity requirements at homeless shelters and activating a network of local outreach teams and warming centers to get homeless individuals out of deadly weather conditions.
But the fledgling Mamdani administration faced scrutiny out of the gate this year when 19 New Yorkers were found dead outside during the weeks-long freeze – with hypothermia contributing to at least 15 of those deaths.
Hizzoner admitted the city was changing the way it responded, though he did not go as far to acknowledge his administration botched its response last winter.
“The winter that we had was not a winter that was like the year before or the year before that; it was the first blizzard in a decade,” Mamdani told reporters. “And so what we have found is an incredible city workforce that did everything that they could, and now developing policies that build upon it.”
The $25 million in new funding will add over 600 single and double occupancy units equating to 800 total beds – a 30% capacity boost from this past winter.
City officials hope the private rooms – which offer an alternative to dormitory-style shelter housing – will encourage homeless New Yorkers off of the streets.
“Part of what we have made these investments in, when we speak to homeless New Yorkers, we will hear that if only there was a low-barrier single-room bed, they would then be willing to go, that they are unwilling to go in a congregate setting,” Mamdani explained.
“And so that’s why we’ve reapportioned a significant amount of this funding specifically to double the amount of low-barrier single and double beds that we have been able to bring online.”
The plan also takes a new approach to homeless outreach – deploying teams across coordinated high-need areas in lieu of the previous method – which relied on a list of 350 known individuals who would likely be in need of shelter and generated a measly 15% contact rate.
The new Rapid Emergency Aid for Cold and Heat (REACH) teams will consist of staffers from the Department of Homeless Services, nonprofit organizations, canvassers, nurses and drivers.
The Mamdani administration will also continue its homeless encampment cleanups led by the Department of Homeless Services. DHS gives encampment dwellers a seven day notice prior to sweeping encampment sites.
The policy began in February after Mamdani back peddled on his commitment to end homeless encampment sweeps — instead opting to move the clean-up efforts out from under the purview of the NYPD.
The REACH teams and additional shelter beds will be up and running by late November into early December according to City Hall.
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