The question of when a New Yorker can be moved indoors against their will was front and center during a City Council hearing on Tuesday on the deaths of 18 people during the recent brutally cold weather.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has faced growing criticism that his administration did not do enough to protect homeless New Yorkers. In her opening remarks, Council Speaker Julie Menin said the deaths were “not inevitable” and blamed gaps in outreach, shelter capacity and mental health services.
But the hearing also highlighted the debate over when city officials can “involuntarily remove” a person who appears to have a mental illness and be a danger to themselves. The issue has taken on added urgency during the recent two-week stretch of wind chills that at times hovered near below-zero temperatures.
At least 15 of the 18 outdoor deaths were directly tied to hypothermia.
Mamdani has maintained that the city’s practice of involuntary removal has not changed since he entered office in January. During the extreme weather emergency, he said, city officials were involuntarily transporting individuals who posed a danger to themselves or others to hospitals.
But during repeated questioning, top administration officials were hard-pressed to clearly define the standards for involuntary removal during extreme and dangerously cold weather.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Alex Crohn described “very context-specific determinations.”
Molly Wasow Park, the outgoing commissioner of the Department of Social Services, called the threshold “situational.”
Phil Wong, a city councilmember from Queens, highlighted his own experience when he said he saw a homeless man wrapped in newspapers lying near City Hall. He said 311 was notified, but the man was still there hours later.
“The wind chill was like minus five or minus 10 [degrees],” Wong said. “I think you only need common sense to conclude that he has no capacity to make his own decisions.”
Park said the man was known to city outreach workers and did not meet the threshold for involuntary removal.
“While I understand that it feels entirely irrational to stay outdoors,” Park added, “there are certain circumstances where, even in the coldest weather, it doesn’t meet the standard for a [….] removal.”
Brian Stettin, the former senior adviser for severe mental illness, argued the standard was actually not hard to apply.
“There are two boxes that have to be checked for involuntary removals: the appearance of mental illness and being a danger to themselves,” he said. “Someone who is insisting on staying outside in dangerous cold temperatures is showing you both.”
Stettin, a holdover from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who has long pushed for more aggressive intervention with people who are severely mentally ill, left his job on Friday.
Since the cold streak began on Jan. 19, the city has performed 85 involuntary removals – 33 by the Department of Social Services and 52 by the NYPD.
The hearing marked the Council’s first oversight inquiry into the Mamdani administration.
Menin described each of the people who had died outside. They included Nolberto Jimbo-Niola, a 52-year-old from Ecuador, who was found dead on a bench in Queens after being discharged from a city hospital. Another man was found outside St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died soon after being brought in for treatment. Frederick Jones, a 67-year-old, died on a Midtown street a mile away from his supportive-housing apartment — hours after emergency responders had tried to check in on him.
“These New Yorkers should be alive today,” Menin said.
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