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4 in 10 NYC shelters have no AC in sleeping areas. The city is trying to change that.
By
Karen Yi
Published Jun 17, 2025
Modified Jun 17, 2025
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Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
By
Karen Yi
Published Jun 17, 2025
Modified Jun 17, 2025
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Sweltering summer days are particularly brutal for homeless New Yorkers stuck sleeping inside dozens of city shelters without air conditioning in the bedrooms.
That’s why the city’s Department of Homeless Services is issuing a new mandate: Any new shelter must provide air conditioning for its residents.
This May, the agency amended its request for proposals, requiring any entity interested in getting city money to open a shelter to provide air conditioning. It said officials will encourage potential providers to install AC where people sleep, too, not just in common areas. It’s part of an effort to improve living conditions for the 86,000 residents who rely on their shelter system.
Right now, nearly half of the Department of Homeless Services shelters don’t have air conditioning where people sleep, officials said. In general, almost every facility provides some sort of cooling, which can range from fans in sleeping areas to common rooms with air conditioning or individual window units in rooms.
The move comes as the pandemic and the migrant crisis have abated and as the agency tries to move away from sheltering people inside costly hotels and instead place them in nonprofit-owned sites that save taxpayers money and are more welcoming to residents.
It also comes as the non-asylum seeking shelter population increased amid a lack of affordable housing.
“ We're trying to get out of old apartment buildings. We're trying to get out of buildings that are not made for sheltering,” Department of Homeless Services Administrator Joslyn Carter said.
“ We've been raising the bar of how we provide services, and we think that this is one way that it's important for us to do that.”
The plan doesn’t address shelters currently serving residents who don’t have air conditioning in common areas or where people sleep. Carter said those sites would need costly capital improvements and electrical upgrades to withstand having air conditioning units. Other sites have windows that don’t open and can’t easily be fitted with AC window units.
Carter said she didn’t know how many new shelters the city would open in the coming years and that it would take time to change the shelter system.
“We are doing it slowly but surely,” she said. ”I want a system that says, ‘I respect you as a person, as a human, as a family.’”
Brooklyn resident Osei Mensah said that while he’s in a shelter now that has air conditioning where he sleeps, he used to live in one that only provided a fan.
“You can’t be in the room when it’s hot. You can’t think right because it’s hot,” he said.
Noam Cohen, 19, said he lives in a Brooklyn shelter where the AC in the room he shares with more than 20 other people isn’t working. He said shelter staff installed two fans.
“The fans at least temporarily are making it bearable in terms of temperature,” he said. But he added the fans are so loud, it makes it hard to sleep. “I need to get noise cancelling headphones.”
Cohen said he’s not sure the air conditioning will be fixed before temperatures ramp up later this week.
Will Watts, deputy executive director for advocacy at the Coalition for the Homeless, said the lack of air conditioning “creates unnecessary risks for people who, for example, take medications that make it hard for them to properly regulate their body temperature.”
"As the summers continue getting hotter, far too many people die every year because of the heat, and no one is more vulnerable than homeless New Yorkers — who have rates of disability much higher than the general public,” he added.
Some local and state lawmakers are pushing to get WiFi installed in every shelter — not just new ones — but the challenge is that many of the buildings are older structures that are expensive to upgrade.
Under the Adams administration, the Department of Homeless Services has encouraged nonprofits to open shelters they own and operate, rather than lease from private landlords, to create better conditions for residents and save the city money in the long run by not having to pay rent to landlords who can jack up the price or refuse to make building fixes.
On Wednesday, the City Council’s general welfare committee is also set to discuss a proposed bill that would require the city to produce a one-time report on the state of air conditioning across homeless shelters. That would include smaller shelter systems run by other agencies, such as the Department of Youth and Community Development.
A spokesperson for DYCD said all 50 of their sites had air conditioning in both sleeping and common areas.
“Air conditioning in homeless shelters isn’t just about comfort; it’s about preventing heat-related illness, protecting basic human dignity, and ensuring folks have what they need to move forward,” Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, who is sponsoring the bill, said.
This story as been updated with additional reporting.
Tagged
economy
homelessness
housing
new york city
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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