The city removed nearly 100 homeless people from the streets overnight amid sub-freezing temperatures, officials said Tuesday — as Mayor de Blasio introduced a new deputy commissioner for his embattled Health and Human Services.
The mayor noted that new Deputy Commissioner Herminia Palacio nearly saw her own mother dumped on the streets after the older woman was evicted following a “psychiatric break.”
So Palacio “understands firsthand the challenges that so many New Yorkers face,” de Blasio said at a press conference.
Palacio got emotional when talking about her mom, saying her experience with her “made me a better person” and showed that “I didn’t see them [mentally ill people] as ‘other.’ … I saw their essence as whole.”
She called homelessness “a longstanding problem’’ in New York City and elsewhere across the nation and acknowledged that it is “an issue that is likely not to be completely resolved.”
“Issues that take 30 years to develop don’t go away in an instant,’’ she said.
The city said 97 people were moved from the street and into shelters, hospitals and other “safe havens’’ between 8 p.m. Monday and 8 a.m. Tuesday. Only one of those was removed involuntarily and was being mentally evaluated.
Another 101 people went to hospital emergency rooms to get out of the cold.
“As in previous years, city outreach teams scoured neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs last night to help bring New Yorkers out of the cold,” Hizzoner said in a statement.
Palacio said, “We need to have an all-hands-on-deck mentality” when dealing with the crisis.
In introducing herself, her voice wavered as she recalled other difficulties in her life, including losing a brother in a car accident.
He was 12 years old, and she wasn’t even born yet.
“But in my family, I understood what loss was,” said the Bronx-born mom and Spanish speaker.
In hailing de Blasio’s Vision Zero program that aims to reduce traffic fatalities, Palacio added that her sister got hit by a car in her teens.
“I’ve never seen such panic in my mother’s eyes,” she said, adding that her sister recovered.