By: Nick Carraway

A senior Democratic official who backed Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise to City Hall is now publicly urging the mayor to reverse course on homeless encampments, warning that leaving people outdoors in brutal winter conditions is putting lives at risk, as the New York Post reported.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, a prominent Mamdani ally who endorsed the left-leaning mayor during last year’s election, said the city must act decisively to move homeless New Yorkers into safe shelter before more die in the cold, according to comments he gave to the Post.

“Being homeless shouldn’t be a death sentence,” Richards told the outlet. “You can’t let people stay out there. These are people in crisis.”

Richards’ remarks mark a notable break from Mamdani’s current policy, which has restricted city agencies from dismantling homeless encampments. As the New York Post exclusively reported last week, the Mamdani administration ordered police and sanitation workers to stop clearing encampments just weeks before a deadly Arctic deep freeze gripped the city.

Since then, at least 14 people have been found dead outdoors across New York City, the Post reported, with eight of those deaths linked directly to hypothermia or freezing conditions.

Images published by the New York Post showed homeless individuals sleeping on snow-covered benches near Prospect Park and huddling under the Manhattan Bridge as temperatures plunged well below freezing.

The growing death toll has intensified criticism of the mayor from both sides of the political aisle. Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, a Republican, joined Richards in calling on Mamdani to abandon his hands-off approach to encampments, warning that the consequences were entirely predictable, according to the Post.

“We said before that people will die,” Fossella told the paper. “Now it looks like the policy is leading to more deaths.”

Fossella added that encampments pose serious dangers even in warmer months, citing widespread drug use, crime, and unsafe conditions — problems that become exponentially worse during extreme winter weather, as the New York Post reported.

“Don’t be surprised if more people die,” Fossella warned.

Richards said he agrees that the encampments must come down, but stressed that the process should be handled with care and dignity. He criticized how previous administrations, including that of former Mayor Eric Adams, sometimes cleared sites by discarding homeless individuals’ belongings, according to the Post.

“I do think the mayor has to take the encampments down,” Richards said. “But it has to be done in a humane way.”

At the same time, Richards acknowledged the long-standing challenges that have kept many homeless New Yorkers on the streets. Many avoid shelters because they believe they are unsafe, overcrowded, or poorly managed — a concern that city leaders have failed to adequately address, he said, as the Post reported.

“That’s a big reason people are out in the street or in the subway,” Richards said. “We have to fix that problem long term.”

Still, he emphasized that immediate action is necessary as freezing temperatures continue.