The extreme cold that hit New York City, but felt most prominently in Staten Island, last winter was not just unbearable, it was lethal. A couple of months ago, news reports stated that prolonged cold exposure here in New York City was the culprit in multiple deaths. Media, as usual, underrated the problem — framing it as isolated incidents and urging people to stay inside — when half of the tragedies happened inside homes where no heating was provided, and the rest were caused by prolonged exposure to extreme weather. According to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, these deaths were preventable.
As a medical professional with clinical and research experience, and a North Shore Staten Island resident who has seen firsthand how poor housing infrastructure amplifies medical risk, I am pro-readiness and pro-prevention — not reactive. I encourage system preparedness to prevent tragedies like those we have recently witnessed. Keeping neighborhoods safe and protecting our senior citizens are not political goals; they are common sense, community obligations that neighbors rely on when infrastructure fails.
Nearly one-fifth of homes in Staten Island were built before 1930, and 63% percent before 1980, according to Cornell’s Program on Applied Demographics. There has been little new residential development in recent decades. An aging housing stock increases health risk during extreme cold: older structures suffer cumulative damage from repeated freeze cycles, and heating upgrades are cost-prohibitive for older residents living on fixed incomes.
The situation is even more dire for residents experiencing homelessness. They remain outdoors longer in a borough with limited shelters, scarce public transportation, and isolated warming centers — far fewer than in other boroughs. Emergency departments across the city see predictable surges during extreme cold, from falls on icy streets to respiratory distress and cold-related injuries, a pattern documented year after year by NYC Health Department cold-weather surveillance data.
Extreme cold is rarely framed through the lens of climate change the way summer heat waves are — but it should be. Climate change is not just about rising temperatures; it is about weather instability. Warmer winters and record-hot summers can coexist with sudden, severe freezing spells that catch communities off guard. As the EPA’s climate indicators report underscores, sudden freezes strain aging energy systems and housing infrastructure, increasing outages precisely when heat becomes a medical necessity.
New York City agencies and Staten Island elected officials have actionable paths forward. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development should conduct mandatory boiler inspections before each winter and shorten emergency repair timelines for aging equipment in older homes. NYC Emergency Management should improve borough-specific communication around weather alerts and actively promote warming center locations across Staten Island — not just in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The 18 deaths that occurred in New York City this past winter should not fade from public memory once temperatures rise. They exposed longstanding gaps in infrastructure investment, senior support, and healthcare access in what is too often called “the forgotten borough.” Cold weather in New York is nothing new — but dying from it, because of policy neglect, should never be accepted as inevitable. Preventing more deaths is not a matter of awareness. It is a matter of action.
Oliver Palacios, MPH Candidate, is a medical professional and public health researcher based on the North Shore of Staten Island, with a focus on environmental health equity and community preparedness