New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped a funeral Monday for nine homeless New Yorkers who froze to death during last winter's deep freeze, a crisis that proved to be his first big test at City Hall, according to the New York Post.
The service at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue honored nine of the 18 homeless people found dead outdoors during the cold snap, whose cremated remains went unclaimed by relatives. Mamdani, who faced heat for his handling of the city's outdoor homeless population during the brutal cold, was not there.
"Now we know little of these nine neighbors, but we do know this they are beloved," Reverend Mark Schultz said at the All Souls Day Mass. "We speak the truth of their dignity," he added.
The arrangements were put together by a handful of good Samaritans, who saved the remains from burial on Hart Island, the city's potter's field off the Bronx. Rhonda Roland Shearer, a nonprofit founder who helped plan the funeral, said she hopes the service "will make everybody alert to prevent this again."
During last winter's bone-chilling temperatures, Mamdani faced calls to force the city's homeless indoors to safety and warmth. While urging New Yorkers to "come inside," the mayor stuck to his position of using involuntary removals only as a "last resort."
Critics also took aim at the administration's rollout of mobile warming centers, which the Post reported were difficult to track down and often not where they were supposed to be. "He knows this is coming and more deaths are coming unless he changes his approach," the Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas told the Post at the time.
The mayor's office did not immediately respond to the Post's request for comment. The paper reported that Mamdani appeared to have skipped the service.
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