New York, New York: City Puts $25 Million Into Code Blue Plan Ahead of Winter Cold

New York City will spend an extra $25 million this winter to find and shelter homeless New Yorkers during extreme cold, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Monday, November 9. The plan expands the city's Code Blue system, the emergency response that opens when the temperature, counting wind chill, falls to freezing or below. It also speeds up snow clearing at bus stops, crosswalks and curb ramps.

"No New Yorker should face the dangers of winter alone, and no part of our city should be left behind," Mamdani said at a press conference at the Department of Sanitation headquarters in Manhattan.

What changes on the coldest nights

More than 300 additional canvassers will walk and drive set routes through high need areas in all five boroughs. City Hall says the routes cover 75 percent of the places where homeless New Yorkers are known to stay. The teams will approach every person they meet instead of working from a preset list of names. The wider canvass follows the city's summer Code Red outreach, which it says reached 20 times more people than earlier efforts.

Up to 55 mobile medical units from NYC Health and Hospitals, each with a registered nurse or nurse practitioner, will treat people in the cold and drive them to warming centers or hospitals. At least three public hospitals will open as warming centers, and all 11 will open in the most severe weather. The Department of Homeless Services will run eight drop-in centers, four new warming centers and 20 warming buses at the highest response level.

The city is adding more than 600 single and double occupancy rooms, for 800 beds on the coldest days, a 30 percent capacity boost from last winter aimed at people who avoid large shelters over safety concerns, the New York Post reported. City Hall said the new outreach teams and beds should be running by late November into early December. Mamdani would not say whether the city would force homeless people off the street during freezing weather, the Post reported.

Snow clearing gets its own upgrade

The Department of Sanitation has folded every bus stop, sidewalk and crosswalk into its snow route maps for the first time. The agency has more than 2,200 vehicles that can be fitted as plows, more than 700 salt spreaders and 7,000 uniformed workers trained for snow duty. It has bought its first 120 snow blowers to clear bus stops and crosswalks faster, added eight plow routes on Staten Island's hilliest streets, and stockpiled 500 million pounds of salt.

Why the city is moving now

By mid-February last winter, during the city's first 24 hour Enhanced Code Blue activation, 19 people had been found dead outdoors during a prolonged cold snap and seven more people had died of hypothermia inside private homes, amNewYork reported, though not all of the outdoor deaths were confirmed as cold deaths. The National Weather Service expects a strong El Niño to bring a warmer, wetter winter, with more rain, sleet and ice and the chance of heavy, wet snow in major storms.

"Winter weather can be dangerous for everyone, but particularly for vulnerable populations," said Christina Farrell, the city's emergency management commissioner. City social service networks will keep checking on an estimated 12,000 people, including older adults and people in domestic violence services and Medicaid home care.