NYC Overhauls Homeless Outreach for Freezing Weather After Last Winter’s Cold Deaths

New York City is revamping its homeless outreach programs for Code Blue weather emergencies, when real-feel temperatures outside drop below freezing overnight and become potentially lethal.

The move follows a brutal winter at the start of the year where at least 18 people died from cold exposure outdoors during a weekslong arctic stretch in January and February that posed an early crisis for the Mamdani administration and put unsheltered New Yorkers at risk. At the time, city officials scrambled to get vulnerable people indoors through increased outreach around the clock and opening more warming sites and low-barrier shelters.

As part of a $25 million investment, the administration is looking to hire 300 additional outreach workers who during frigid weather will fan out across zones where unsheltered people tend to stay, including encampments, parks and subway steps. Officials did not specify these areas, but said they represent about 75% of “known unsheltered locations” citywide.

Department of Social Services Commissioner Erin Dalton said her agency identified the zones based on 311 calls for homeless outreach and encampment responses, along with intel from canvassers who scour the streets throughout the year. She said DSS tested the approach last summer during extreme heat periods and recorded more than 2,000 “engagements” with people, more than 20 times as many on a given day compared to the previous summer.

“We’re going to implement this and then continue to improve. There’s no perfect plan,” Dalton told The City Reporter in an interview. “Weather is changing rapidly, and so we want to make sure that we can continue to innovate there.”

The overhaul includes hundreds more low-barrier beds in single- and double-occupancy rooms that New Yorkers can access through a relaxed intake process, as well as hiring dozens more nurses for outreach teams during freezing temperatures.

The city is also soliciting for on-demand transportation to speed up getting people into shelters, warming centers and drop-in sites, where they can get free food, showers and case management services. That is in addition to 50 NYC Health + Hospitals vans, each staffed with a nurse or nurse practitioner so people can get checkups, and 20 DSS warming buses at peak levels, officials said.

Not all 300 new canvassers will be deployed during every Code Blue event, according to the department, but they will be on standby for the most dangerous weather. Dalton added the city is interested in hiring more outreach workers with personal histories of street homelessness who can connect with unsheltered New Yorkers, and DSS will train them before they deploy into the field.

Advocates Hopeful for Retooled Strategy

Homeless advocates said they are pleased the administration plans to do more to find people in need who do not know about or trust city resources, including shelters. Some street-homeless people say they stay out of the shelter system due to concerns about safety and strict rules, even if that means living outside and risking the elements.

Andrew Chappotin, an activist with the nonprofit Safety Net Project who lived on the streets for three years until last winter’s fatal cold stretch, said he entered a Safe Haven shelter at the end of January even though he had negative experiences in local shelters before.

“I just couldn’t take the cold anymore,” Chappotin said. “This was the coldest weather I’ve ever experienced. My body did not do well this past winter.”

He said street outreach teams still need to build stronger relationships with unsheltered residents and better inform them about accessing help.

Adolfo Abreu, housing campaigns director for the advocacy organization VOCAL-NY, said he is excited about the revamped Code Blue program and hopes it is part of a broader effort to expand homeless outreach year-round. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Abreu said, has “outlined a very bold vision of a city that works for working families and as many people as possible. And a big gap in that vision has been how we’ve been kind of executing, delivering vital governmental services to our most vulnerable New Yorkers.”

Nearly 5,000 people were estimated to be living unsheltered in the city during an annual official count in March, an 11% jump from 2025. The survey is usually conducted in January, but was postponed because of the extreme cold.

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