Eighteen people are dead in New York City this winter, temperatures have plunged to sub-Antarctic levels, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration still won't forcibly bring homeless individuals inside — even when they're camped across the street from a hospital.

That's the scene on East 34th Street, where an unnamed homeless woman has been living in a makeshift hovel directly across from NYU Langone Hospital for what nearby shop employees say has been years. She appeared on the New York Post's Monday front page, mumbling and unresponsive to reporters.

First responders told the Post they couldn't help her under the current city guidelines. Several people at the shop said no one had even attempted to move her since Saturday.

She survived. Eighteen others didn't.

A Policy That Lets People Freeze

The Mamdani administration has leaned on a "last resort" policy that permits authorities to force someone indoors only if that person is deemed a danger to themselves or others. In practice, this means a woman lying on a freezing sidewalk in weather colder than parts of Antarctica doesn't meet the threshold — because the standard is subjective, and the administration has chosen the most passive possible interpretation.

City Hall press secretary Dora Pekec claimed the administration hasn't changed any Adams-era policies on removals. But that claim doesn't square with what's happening on the ground. Sources told the Post that the Sanitation Department has been explicitly told not to remove homeless encampments. Instead, sanitation workers are organizing camp dwellers' belongings — stacking them neatly. Cops reportedly aren't allowed to clear sidewalks either.

One frustrated council source captured the absurdity plainly, describing Sanitation's current role as "maid services for the homeless."

During last year's campaign, Mamdani promised to end a program initiated by his predecessor, Eric Adams, that deployed clinicians backed by police officers to assess people's ability to care for themselves and, if necessary, transport them involuntarily to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He's delivering on that promise. The cost is measured in bodies.

Baltimore Did What New York Won't

The contrast with Baltimore is damning — and Mamdani walked right into it. Late last month, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott declared the cold an emergency and directed police to bring people indoors even if they refused assistance. Scott didn't agonize over liability. He didn't wait for a subjective assessment. He acted.

"The order to take people off the streets came from me because people cannot be allowed out in such weather."

That's Brandon Scott — the same mayor Mamdani has publicly praised for reducing crime. Apparently, Mamdani admires Scott's results but not his willingness to make hard calls when lives are at stake.

A City Hall spokeswoman tried to wave away the comparison, claiming that differing laws between New York and Maryland make it inapplicable. She didn't specify what those legal differences are. Convenient.

The Legal Excuse Doesn't Hold

Former NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer dismantled the legal dodge directly:

"Bring people in first and worry about legal challenges afterward."

Stringer argued that the standard should be simple: can they survive the night? — and that the mayor has broad authority in how existing policy is applied. He posed the question City Hall doesn't want to answer:

"Is this ideology or incompetence?"

It's a fair question. Mamdani's administration appears paralyzed by a philosophical commitment to autonomy that treats a mumbling woman freezing on a sidewalk as exercising free choice. Saving lives, Stringer noted, is the most important duty of an elected official. It's remarkable that this needs to be said aloud.

The People Closest to the Problem Are Screaming

Brian Stettin, who served as a senior adviser in the Adams administration, called the case of the woman on East 34th Street "infuriating." He argued that imminent danger during a Code Blue requires action regardless of ideology — and that cops should be on the streets responding to life-threatening situations.

City Council members were briefed over the weekend, but according to a council source, officials "barely said anything about involuntarily removing people." Another source described the situation as "confusion across the board." The people tasked with governing the city can't get a straight answer from the people running it.

This is what ideological government looks like in practice. Not bold reform. Not compassionate innovation. Confusion, paralysis, and dead New Yorkers.

Compassion Without Action Isn't Compassion

The progressive theory of homelessness holds that forced intervention violates individual dignity — that the compassionate thing is to respect a person's choice to remain on the street, even in lethal cold. It's a position that sounds humane in a faculty lounge and kills people on a sidewalk.

Mamdani campaigned on ending involuntary removals. His voters got what they asked for. The homeless woman on East 34th Street — across from one of the best hospitals in the country, unreachable by the first responders who wanted to help her — is the policy working exactly as designed.

The winter death toll stands at eighteen. Temperatures are slowly climbing in the Northeast, but that number isn't coming back down. Every one of those deaths occurred under a city government that had the authority to act and chose not to.