Mayor Mamdani is implementing additional measures across the city to shelter vulnerable New Yorkers amid the brutally cold temperatures this weekend.
The mercury in New York City dove to nearly zero degrees Saturday night. A wind advisory warning of winds of 20 mph to 25 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph, producing dangerously cold wind chills was in place until midnight Saturday.
Mamdani’s emergency action plan includes the opening of 64 new hotel shelter units in Queens, on top of 48 new Safe Haven “drop-in”-style beds that were opened in the Bronx on Friday for homeless people resistant to traditional-style shelters.
Sixty-five warming spaces — located at hospitals, houses of worship and schools — are active around town throughout the weekend, with warming buses also parked outside many of the hospitals and also transit hubs. The sites are listed on the city’s NYC311 site.
Two additional warming centers have been added in Far Rockaway and Washington Heights, in addition to the 10 at schools announced Friday.
“The temperature tonight will be the coldest we have seen all winter,” Mamdani said Saturday. “If you are still outside, please come inside. Being outdoors for even a brief period of time can be lethal. City government is doing everything in its power to keep vulnerable New Yorkers safe and warm during this winter weather crisis.”
“The cold is persistent, but so is this city,” Mamdani added.
Around 150 additional outreach workers are on duty to contact and help connect vulnerable New Yorkers with shelter. More than 50 school nurses have also been deployed, Mamdani said.
In the last three weeks, outreach teams have placed more than 1,300 people into shelters and involuntarily transported 29 New Yorkers to shelter.
The number of units has been increased to 33, expanding the NYC Health + Hospitals‘ mobile warming outreach initiative. The pilot “peer outreach” initiative through the city’s Department of Homeless Services is deploying former homeless New Yorkers to reach out to and build trust with other vulnerable or homeless New Yorkers who are still outside.
“Extreme Cold” warnings went into effect for New York City beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday and were expected to continue to 1 p.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
During this wave of “lethal” freezing weather, as the mayor has described it, he’s urged all New Yorkers, in general, to stay indoors. But some don’t have that luxury.
Mouhamd Barry, a Doordash deliverista picking up an order from McDonald’s in Downtown Brooklyn Saturday evening, said he was working in the bitter chill because he needs to make money and, as an immigrant, has few other avenues.
“I have only opportunity for food delivery, that’s it,” he said. “If I have opportunity to go to the college, you know, that is my dream.”
“It’s too cold,” he said of the Arctic climate. “I have four jeans (on) right now.”
Others, like Straw Greenhorn, 43, who was preaching outside the Barclays Center, were outdoors of their own volition.
“I’m a preacher, you know, just trying to, you know, spread the love,” he said.
Sporting three coats and three pairs of pants against the cold, he’d been bearing up and sharing the good word for half an hour.
“We’re not dictated by the weather,” he said.
