A heartbreaking 96% of pleas to help homeless New Yorkers never actually led to any assistance since the deadly cold snap hit the Big Apple — with city workers unable to even find the destitute denizens most of the time, The Post has learned.
The stunning struggles revealed by 311 data came as the city’s medical examiner testified Tuesday that at least 15 of 18 deaths during the deep freeze were directly related to hypothermia.
City Council members grilled outgoing Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park and Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, about the deaths in a hearing over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration’s much-criticized response to the life-or-death weather.
“These deaths are not inevitable. They are the result of gaps and outreach, shelter capacity, mental health services and follow-up,” said City Council Speaker Julie Menin as the marathon hearing kicked off.
Iscol and Park, both holdovers from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who are slated to soon leave their posts, argued the prolonged cold since the Jan. 24 winter storm created additional dangers for homeless New Yorkers and additional problems for city officials to solve.
The 311 data analyzed by The Post reveals the difficulties that responders had trying to locate homeless people amid the bitter cold.
The city’s 311 system received 1,183 complaints for homeless assistance, the data shows.
In 72% of those cases, or 850 times, homeless services workers couldn’t find the person reported to 311, according to the data.
For another 250 times, the homeless person refused services from the mobile outreach response team, which apparently took no for an answer.
Amid the troubles, the city shifted the responsibility for calling to report homeless people in need away from 311 on Jan. 31 and handed the job over to 911 operators, officials revealed during the City Council hearing.
Mamdani had repeatedly said publicly that all calls for homeless New Yorkers would be transferred to 911 since the cold weather descended on the city a week prior.
Park said the city had been under a “Code Blue” until Jan. 31, meaning those calls only went to 911 between the overnight hours of 4 p.m. and 8 a.m.
The alert was changed to an enhanced Code Blue after that point, with all homeless assistance calls going to the 911 operator, Park said.
The delay drew criticism from council members.
“In deep freeze situations, we have to take Code Blue seriously because time is of the essence when lives are on the line,” said Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens).
“The fact that it took nearly two weeks to redirect urgent Code Blue calls from 311 to 911 is deeply concerning, and we need faster action to protect vulnerable New Yorkers.”
— Additional reporting by Matthew Fischetti
