When tragedies hit, we expect answers. We want to know why the tragedy happened, who’s to blame, what could have been done to prevent it. Over the course of the recent brutal cold spell that hit New York City, 18 people died out on the streets – at least 13 of them for reasons related to hypothermia – in what is categorically a tragedy. This tragedy has also been cast by the press as one of the first real tests of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new administration. And when tragedies become politicized, the facts frequently become collateral damage.
The question of why so many people died is better understood by looking at why so many people in New York City sleep unsheltered in the first place. Over the last four years, former Mayor Eric Adams responded to the homelessness crisis with a series of high-profile sweeps of encampments that failed to move a single New Yorker into permanent housing from January 2024 to June 2025 and eroded any goodwill earned with the homeless population. These sweeps failed on multiple levels. First, they were glaringly inhumane – many unhoused New Yorkers lost the few possessions they had, and the process undermined their trust in city services. They were also ineffective – they served only to remove people from sight – and the Adams administration released little to no data about whether the people targeted in these sweeps were connected to housing or had better long-term outcomes.
Some have asserted that these recent tragic deaths from the cold would not have occurred had Mamdani continued the policy of encampment sweeps. But as there is no evidence that any of those who perished from the cold were sleeping in encampments or were individuals who otherwise would have been subject to sweeps, those assertions seem little more than opportunistic attempts to get the city to return to an ineffective and inhumane policy. We fully support the mayor’s decision to end encampment sweeps…