NYC Mayor Mamdani adds more homeless outreach, warming centers as 'lethal' cold weekend weather expected

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Feb 6, 2026

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NEW YORK — As temperatures are expected to drop again into single digits over the weekend, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city is enlisting the help of school nurses, business improvement districts and formerly homeless New Yorkers to get people out of the dangerously chilly elements.

The mayor said that, over the past three weeks, outreach teams have placed more than 1,250 people into shelters and involuntarily transported 27 people. Seventeen people have died in the cold stretch.

“We are now headed into what will be some of the coldest days yet, with real feel temperatures plummeting to 10 below. These will be lethal conditions,” the mayor said at a weather briefing Friday afternoon. “Being outside for even a short period of time could pose a severe risk.”

“Extreme Cold” warnings are in effect for New York City from 10 a.m. Saturday to 1 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service said Friday.

The city is expanding on patchwork efforts across the Big Apple to open up new places inside where people can take refuge, according to Mamdani. That includes 65 new hotel shelter units and 62 heated vehicles for people to take refuge in, plus 10 public schools, two CUNY centers and two overdose prevention centers to be used as warming centers.

The city is also adding new outreach teams, including business improvement district workers, peers who were formerly homeless, and nonprofit workers, Mamdani said, though he did not specify how many more outreach workers there are right now than normal.

Three of the individuals who died in the cold were found to have likely overdosed, officials said, with 13 others determined to have died partly due to hypothermia.

“We want every New Yorker who needs help seeking warmth to be able to find it,” Mamdani said.

Legal Aid earlier Friday urged the mayor to bulk up the outreach resources and strengthen coordination across the city’s response.

“More lives are at stake, and the City must act with the urgency this moment demands,” the organization said in a statement.

Asked whether, as mayor, he feels ultimately responsible for those deaths, Mamdani responded that in his role, he’s “responsible for city actions across the five boroughs.”

“I think that I have to be clear about that, because I think, for far too long, New Yorkers have been told to cast blame in different places, and I am the mayor,” he said. “And so when a New Yorker has a critique about the way that the city has been running and the way the city has been responding, it’s my job to hear them.”