As New York City mourns the deaths of at least 18 New Yorkers during this stretch of extreme cold, a familiar argument has resurfaced: encampment sweeps that forcibly disperse people living on the streets would have prevented these tragedies.
They wouldn’t have.
While sweeps have the appearance of decisive action, they do not solve homelessness. The city’s own data shows that last year, only about 3% of people encountered during encampment sweeps accepted a shelter bed for even a single night, and not one was connected to permanent housing.
Encampment sweeps are described as “outreach” but are actually enforcement actions.
They dismantle tents, discard sleeping bags and blankets, and scatter people from the fragile communities they rely on for safety. In freezing temperatures, these disruptions put people at greater risk for hypothermia and isolation.
To understand why sweeps fail, we need to start with an uncomfortable truth: most unsheltered New Yorkers already know they can go to shelter, and many have made informed decisions not to.
For years, people living on the streets told us they feel congregate shelters can lack privacy and flexibility, restricting their ability to make choices. Many tried shelters and had a bad experience, so are reluctant to try again. For someone already experiencing the trauma of homelessness, entering shelter can feel worse than staying outside.
That is why repeatedly “offering shelter” — especially under the threat of a sweep — doesn’t work. People are not refusing help; they are refusing a system they feel can’t meet their basic needs.
Clearing encampments doesn’t change that calculation. It only makes survival more difficult and hardens unsheltered individuals’ resolve against the system. These deaths must force us to focus less on punitive actions and more on what saves lives.
When temperatures drop below 32 degrees after dark, the city activates enhanced Code Blue, which intensifies outreach and relaxes shelter rules to bring more people indoors. Other emergency options could include increasing street outreach and working with the hospital system to prevent discharging people into life-threatening conditions.
Policy changes, such as expanding single-room Safe Havens, allowing couples and people with pets to stay together, and using hotel rooms for those who won’t enter congregate settings but will accept private, secure space, would help bring reluctant people indoors.
Beyond emergency measures, real pathways to permanent options must be prioritized.
Programs like Volunteers of America–Greater New York’s “Street to Home” initiative show what’s possible when we meet people where they are.
Instead of requiring people to start in shelter before accessing permanent housing, Street to Home connects chronically unsheltered New Yorkers directly to permanent housing with supports and tackles the paperwork after. The result is faster placements, better outcomes, and lives stabilized, not displaced.
Street to Home works because it recognizes that permanent housing is not a reward, but the solution to homelessness. By March 2024, the Street to Home pilot successfully convinced 116 people living on the subway to enter permanent housing, accounting for nearly 30% of the 397 housing placements made through the city’s end-of-line subway outreach.
Saving lives requires solutions grounded in evidence, dignity, and humanity. That means investing in trust-building outreach, safe shelter, and direct pathways to permanent housing that end homelessness instead of simply sweeping people temporarily out of sight.
New York has a choice. We can keep repeating policies that fail, or we can commit to what we know works. Lives depend on choosing the latter.
Ginsburg is president and CEO of Volunteers of America–Greater New York & McSilver Fellow at New York University.
