It's Wednesday, you deserve a treat, like an episode of the Hell Gate Podcast! Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Last week, we wrote about the Mamdani administration's Code Blue response and what the City is doing to keep New Yorkers who live and sleep outside safe in below freezing temperatures; as of Friday, 10 New Yorkers had been found dead outdoors. By Monday, that number climbed to 16, with 13 from hypothermia. As temperatures drop into the single digits this weekend, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday that a new Safe Haven shelter is open in Lower Manhattan, accelerated to meet the current weather conditions.
"We are deploying every tool at our disposal to keep New Yorkers safe, warm, and indoors. This new facility in Lower Manhattan will help older and our most medically vulnerable New Yorkers get off the street and into stable shelter with the services that they need," the mayor said in a statement.
Breaking Ground, the nonprofit organization that will be operating the new shelter, describes the Safe Haven model as a "lower-threshold" form of transitional housing with more privacy, a relaxed intake policies and fewer requirements, like complying with a curfew, catered towards sheltering people who are experiencing chronic homelessness and are reluctant to enter the system—even when sleeping outside can be life-threatening.