During the storm, I saw two NYPD officers approach a man sleeping in the snow on the corner of 86th and Broadway. It was 12 degrees but felt like -4. They asked him if he was “doing OK out here.”
OF COURSE he wasn’t doing OK! It’s freezing and the conditions were unsafe. But in his cognitive cold-induced delirium, he answered that he was “fine.” What did the officers do in response? They left him on the street.
In this weather, outreach is not about quality-of-life enforcement, it’s life-saving emergency action—or it should be. Three people were found dead on our streets during the Code Blue conditions we’re experiencing in NYC right now. If the city fails and another person freezes to death the human toll is unacceptable and the legal exposure is real.
People should never be sleeping on the streets, but especially not in a storm like this. Let’s bring people off the streets and into shelter under the NYC Right to Shelter law.
When I’m in Congress, I will introduce and back laws that fund more community-based outreach efforts, invest in programs to protect the most vulnerable, and build more housing.
