Those cooling centers aren’t as close as you might think.

As an extreme heat wave descended over New York City this week, de Blasio administration officials have repeatedly assured the public that there are plenty of cooling centers where individuals without air conditioners at home can take refuge.

“Particularly for young children, for seniors, for folks with chronic diseases, this is a very perilous time,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show Friday morning. “There are 500 cooling centers sponsored by the city—libraries, community centers, senior centers—where people can go to be safe, be cool.”

But the distribution of these cooling centers is uneven: Some 353,182 individuals aged 65 or older live more than a half-mile from a cooling center, according to an analysis by Measure of America, a project of the nonprofit Social Science Research Council. That’s 30.2 percent of the elderly population. (The elderly, as well as others in fragile health, are most likely to suffer illness or even death due to extreme heat.)

“It’s a long way,” said Allison Nickerson, executive director of Live On, an advocacy group for senior citizens in New York City. “There’s some effort by the city and some nonprofits and Lyft to make sure that people can get there. But it’s often very difficult for older people, particularly in immigrant communities, particularly people who are homebound, to find out about those resources.”


Nearly one third of New York City’s senior citizens live more than a half-mile from a cooling center. Map by Laura Laderman/Measure of America. You can explore more data like this on Data2Go and Data2GoHealth.

“Cooling center” is really just another name for a public institution (like the libraries and senior centers the mayor mentioned) that’s agreed to take in all-comers into their air-conditioned space. That means cooling center locations are limited by the availability of public spaces within any particular neighborhood.

According to Measure of America’s map, that distribution leaves curious “cooling center deserts” not just in less densely populated areas such as Staten Island and eastern Queens, but also in East Flatbush, Brooklyn; northwestern Queens; and northeastern Bronx.

“The city’s heat plan was developed to ensure the most vulnerable populations could seek relief during a heat emergency,” said Omar Bourne, a spokesman for the Department of Emergency Management, which oversees the network. “We conduct continuous analysis with our cooling center partners to seek improvements to the system”

Senior centers may provide transportation for individuals who cannot get there on their own, but service can be uneven and waits long. In addition, Lyft is offering two free rides per customer through this weekend, though those rides are limited to $15 in value and only take passengers to a limited number of cooling centers.

Listen to Matthew Schuerman discuss his report on WNYC:

While 89 percent of New Yorkers have air conditioning in their homes, according to surveys by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, that means nearly a million do not. A 2016 Columbia University study determined that 638 deaths where heat plays a central or contributing role occur every year in the city, a number that could increase five-fold due to climate change.

While air conditioning (not to mention a reduction in global warming!) is considered essential to curbing heat deaths, some experts are skeptical that cooling centers are the answer. NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg told WNYC for a previous story that cooling centers only attract a limited population—those who normally visit the senior center or library during fairer weather as well.

“People tend not to go to places that are really out of their ordinary circles during crises,” said Klinenberg, author of a book on the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.

In past summers, WNYC has also found that cooling centers are hard to find, even when one has an address in hand, and even after the Department of Emergency Management sent out large signs to be displayed outside.

Nonetheless, cooling centers remain popular strategy by cities to attack extreme heat. A handbook issued by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies just this week recommends that more cities embrace them and even evacuate vulnerable individuals to them in certain cases.

The New York City Housing Authority has begun a different approach. The authority discovered that 40 percent of its senior buildings are located more than a mile away from a cooling center. This summer it launched a pilot program where it is providing free air conditioners and the energy to power them at two buildings. In addition, government programs provide qualified low-income individuals free air conditioners as well as assistance in paying energy bills, but criteria for both are strict

“I think the greatest asset we have is people checking on their neighbors,” Nickerson said. “That is our first line of defense."

Find a cooling center at maps.nyc.gov/oem/cc.

METHODOLOGY: For this analysis, Measure of America used population data from the 2013-2017 US Census Bureau American Community Survey to determine the number of residents ages 65 and older within a half-mile radius of one or more of the city-designated cooling centers open on July 18, 2019. If a Census block group was partially but not fully inside the half-mile radius, the number of senior citizens was allocated according to the fraction of the area within the half-mile radius. Including cooling centers not in operation on July 18th did not fill in the major gaps on the map.

Matthew Schuerman is an editor at WNYC.

Additional reporting by Rosemary Misdary.