The morning after a blizzard had blanketed New York City in snow, two outreach workers walked the streets of East Harlem. They trudged past piles of sludge and turned under an overpass, where a woman sat in the shadows of the towering steel beams. Her body was covered with blankets, her face concealed by a magenta scarf. A pair of pink flip flops poked out from under her wheelchair.
“Did you sleep here last night?” asked one of the workers, Alexandra Coleman, from the Center for Urban Community Services. She looked relieved when the woman whispered that she had found somewhere indoors to go.
Ms. Coleman and her colleague asked the woman if they could bring her anything: Lunch? Coffee? Water? After pausing for a moment, the woman agreed to accept a coffee, with lots of cream and sugar.
Ms. Coleman lit up. “That was my highlight of the month,” she said, explaining that it had been the most the woman had said to her in nearly four years of working together. “We don’t know her name. We don’t know anything about her.”
A staggeringly cold winter in New York City has brought new urgency to a battle that is played out across many American cities: persuading people living on the street to come indoors. Many outreach workers emphasize that the effort requires trust, especially if the people involved feel safer out of doors. Pulling them off the street against their will can destroy relationships it has taken months or years to build, setting back efforts that will help in the long term, the workers said.
During his campaign for mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke about building more affordable housing as a solution to street homelessness, but said little about what he planned to do right away. He suggested that he was skeptical of the heavy-handed approach of Mayor Eric Adams, who supported removing people from the street involuntarily, even when they were not a danger to others.
Then, just weeks into Mr. Mamdani’s term, a brutal, biting cold snap hit. Freezing temperatures lasted more than a week, and the wind chill temperature dipped below zero. At least 20 people died after exposure to the cold. The new mayor faced scrutiny, even as the city scrambled to try to bring people indoors — placing 1,500 in warming centers and shelters and creating a new program through the public hospital system to send out medical workers in vans around the city.
Brian Stettin, who was a senior adviser for severe mental illness under Mr. Adams, said Mr. Mamdani’s administration has shown “a tolerance of somebody staying out there if they want to.”
“I don’t think that should happen when temperatures are as dangerous as they were,” he said. “A more appropriate approach would be everybody has got to come inside.”
Between Jan. 19 and Feb. 11, when temperatures were particularly frigid, the Department of Homeless Services made 44 involuntary transports, about 1.9 per day, according to city data. This was compared to an average of about four per day in January and February 2025, and about 1.89 per day in that period in 2024.
Police officers or clinicians, such as psychiatrists or social workers, can remove people from the streets against their will, but only after determining that they pose a danger to themselves or others. In 2025, the state clarified the criteria so that people could be removed if they seemed unable to meet their own “basic needs.”
“The mayor has been very clear, not just in his words but in his actions,” said Joe Calvello, Mr. Mamdani’s spokesman. “Our outreach has prioritized and will continue to prioritize building trust and providing homeless New Yorkers with a range of options to come in from off the street voluntarily.”
Though lately the temperatures have provided hints of spring, the cold is not yet done with New York, and will keep the pressure on the city to get people indoors.
There are many reasons some might want to stay outdoors. One night in March, a team from NYC Health + Hospitals was traveling around the city offering food and transportation to an indoor space to spend the night. All around Lower Manhattan, they met people who had no interest in spending the night in a shelter.
There was Frankie Soledo, sleeping on a doorstep in the West Village, surrounded by a sea of shopping bags, blankets and boxes of half-eaten pizza, most of which he would have to leave behind in order to go with them.
There was Dawa Singh, sleeping in an encampment near Collect Pond Park, who had been homeless for only for a few weeks but felt safe in his sleeping bag, where he knew that church volunteers would check on him the next day.
Many of the people outdoors had heard rumors about frightening situations at shelters.
“The violence,” said Vinny Torres, 56, who was sleeping steps from the Ray’s Pizza near St. Marks Place, covering his face with a blanket as biting winds nipped at any exposed skin. “That’s my biggest qualm.”
Mr. Torres was affable but firmly resistant when the outreach team asked if he would agree to be driven to a shelter or warming center.
Deborah Berkman, director of the shelter and economic stability project at the New York Legal Assistance Group, said that theft, violence and even sexual assault can be a problem in shelters, where a dozen single adults may share open dormitories. Her clients who have struggled with addiction worry that drug use in shelters, which is typically banned but still occurs, will cause them to slip back into old patterns.
“Unfortunately, I’ve heard a lot of very terrible stories about things that have happened in shelter,” Ms. Berkman said. “I understand why people would feel safer by themselves or with a small group of people outside.”
There are also practical considerations. Shelters have curfews and rules about where you can eat, and most don’t allow pets. Generally, a single adult can bring with them only two bags for all their blankets, clothing, mementos and important documents.
“Put yourself in their position,” said Lauren Schuster, the chief external affairs officer at the Urban Resource Institute. “You have accumulated this stuff, these items that have now become your entire world. They’re all you have and you’re being asked to relinquish them to enter shelter. That is a devastating calculation to make for people.”
Dave Giffen, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, put it plainly.
“If I’m a vegetarian and you keep offering me a trip to Gallagher’s Steakhouse, you can offer it to me every single day and it’s still not what I need,” Mr. Giffen said. “The term ‘outreach resistant’ makes it sound like people are saying ‘I want to be here.’ They’re not resisting. They’re just not being offered what’s meaningful and helpful to them.”
Emma Goldberg is a Times reporter who writes about political subcultures and the way we live now.
The post The Challenge of Helping Homeless People Who Avoid New York’s Shelters appeared first on New York Times.
