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As death toll in NYC amid frigid temps climbs to 10, Mayor Zohran Mamdani orders stepped-up outreach

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — The city is ramping up efforts to get people off the streets as the count of New Yorkers found dead outside climbed to 10 and freezing temperatures are expected to continue through the week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Tuesday.

“When the cold is this deadly, we need to meet the moment and leave no stone unturned,” Mamdani said at a City Hall press conference, adding that the city is in the midst of the coldest weather conditions resdients have seen in eight years. Sub-freezing temps are expected to continue at least through this coming weekend.

At least 10 people had perished in the cold as of Tuesday morning, officials said, with the most recent being a man found on a bench near a Key Food in Flushing on Tuesday morning, police sources said. The exact cause of the deaths remains unknown.

A number of those who died are suspected of being homeless, though IDs for many of the victims were still pending.

The mayor said he has directed city workers, nonprofits and faith-based groups to ramp up street outreach in an effort to find and relocate people to shelters or other locations. NYC officials were was also working with the state to have mental health outreach teams temporarily focus exclsuively on getting people inside and out of the cold.

The city has opened up ten new warming sites since Friday across the five boroughs, Mamdani shared, plus ten new “warming buses” and seven new Health + Hospitals centers opened Monday evening.

The city’s annual HOPE count of those experiencing street homelessness, originally scheduled for Tuesday night, has been postponed. Around 4,500 people, as of last year’s count, are estimated to be street homeless, though that number could be higher. Some of those who died in the cold this weekend had been homeless, the mayor said, though their status at the time of their deaths were unclear.

Those who perished include 90-year-old Doreen Ellis, a Crown Heights resident with dementia who wandered out of her apartment into the frigid air Sunday night. She was found Monday morning.

 

“It’s just sad that she was found in the backyard in the cold and laying down in the ice. It’s sad,” neighbor Junior Sharpe told the Daily News on Monday.

Mamdani urged citydwellers to check in on their neighbors and to call 311 if they saw anyone in need of help.

“Here is the bottom line, New York City: Extreme weather is not a personal failure, but it is a public responsibility,” he said. “If we have the resources to act, we have the obligation to act, and we are mobilizing every resource at our disposal to ensure that New Yorkers are brought indoors during this potentially lethal weather event.”

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(Nicholas Williams and Tom Tracy contributed to this story.)

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©2026 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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