The sun was about to set Monday evening and the temperature was still 90 degrees. The air was thick and oppressive. Shaasia Wood and her 4-year-old son were hanging out on the sidewalk, hoping for a breeze, near the homeless shelter where they live in Upper Manhattan.
That was because inside their un-air-conditioned room, “It feels like living in hell, really,” Ms. Wood said.
Ms. Wood, a 40-year-old home care aide, has plenty of company in her misery: Thousands of families with children live in New York City shelters that lack air-conditioning in the rooms where people live and sleep, even in the depths of a heat wave. On Monday, no air-conditioners were visible above the ground-floor offices of her shelter, the Hamilton Family Residence.
At the Doña Elsie Family Residences in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, Floyd Perkins, 56, who lives with his partner and seven children, said, “All I know is that we’ve been sweating ever since summer came, and sweating, sweating, sweating.”
Some family shelters are in former hotels that are fully air-conditioned, but many of those shelters house newly arrived migrant families. Shelters for the rest of the homeless population are typically in buildings that do not have air-conditioning, the city said.
Mayor Eric Adams, who on Monday reminded New Yorkers that “a heat wave can be deadly and life-threatening if you are not prepared,” recommended on Tuesday that shelter residents simply suck it up.
“Everyday New Yorkers don’t have air-conditioners,” he said in response to a question about shelters at a news conference, “We make do: fans, paper fans. When I grew up as a kid, an air-conditioner? I didn’t even know what that was!” He said that when he was a child, his mother had told him to stick his head in the refrigerator when it was hot.
The city allows air-conditioners in units in the shelters that are not in hotels, but only if residents obtain a note from a health care provider saying that air-conditioning is medically necessary.
At least that is how the process is supposed to work. Mr. Perkins’s partner, Juanita Sanders, 43, said that about three weeks ago she had given staff members at the Doña Elsie shelter a doctor’s note stating that one of her sons had severe asthma and that he could end up in the hospital unless he sleeps in an air-conditioned room. No relief has materialized, she said.
“You’re going to approve it at the end of the summer?” she said. “Then we don’t even need it.”
One of Ms. Sanders’s neighbors, Sylvania Cordova, 35, said that she had provided a doctor’s note confirming that she and her daughter had asthma but that staff members had repeatedly refused to install an air-conditioner. “They said I will have to wait until I move,” Ms. Cordova said.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services said it was looking into Ms. Cordova’s case.
Shelters typically have an air-conditioned common area, but those rooms do not offer places to sleep. City officials said that many family shelters are in older buildings where the wiring could not handle air-conditioners in every room.
The city’s policy is in line with guidance from the state agency that oversees shelters, the Office of Temporary Disability Assistance. A 2021 memorandum from the agency says that “during times of extreme heat and humidity, shelter operators should provide fans as needed for the comfort of residents, provide information on area cooling centers to the extent available and remind residents to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids.”
By 2 p.m. on Tuesday, the temperature in the city was 92 degrees and the heat index stood at 98. The mercury is not expected to drop below 78 on Tuesday night, though thunderstorms may provide some relief. The city is under a heat advisory until Wednesday night, as well as an air-quality alert until the previous night.
At the Doña Elsie shelter, Mr. Perkins said he had tried covering the windows with blankets during the day, “to keep the sun from coming in, just to keep some shade in place.” But it did not work, he said.
At the Hamilton Family Residence, Ms. Wood said that the shelter had supplied a box fan. “It’s just blowing hot air,” she said.
“Unfortunately, everybody doesn’t have asthma,” she added ruefully.
In her living quarters, she said, “We have to be down to our underwear because it’s so baking hot.” She said that in the downstairs offices where the shelter employees work, the air-conditioning operated fine.
“It’s cool for them,” she said, “but they get to go home. We live here.”
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