New York City opens 3 cooling centers near Brownsville, East Harlem and Tremont as heat index nears 100 degrees

Cooling centers near me in New York City add 3 more locations

New Yorkers searching for cooling centers near me in New York City now have 3 more places to go. The Health Department and New York City Emergency Management opened 3 Neighborhood Health Action Centers, in Brownsville, East Harlem and Tremont, as cooling centers for the first time, announced June 11, 2026. The Brownsville center sits at 259 Bristol Street in Brooklyn, the East Harlem center at 158 East 115th Street in Manhattan, and the Tremont center at 1826 Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The city opened them ahead of a forecast heat index, a measure of how hot the air actually feels once humidity is added to the thermometer reading, reaching as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit that Thursday and Friday. Any city cooling center activates once the National Weather Service forecasts a heat index of 95 degrees for 2 consecutive days, or 100 degrees at any time, and a resident can find the nearest one by calling 311.

The addition of our Neighborhood Health Action Centers as cooling centers gives New Yorkers in these neighborhoods a greater chance to stay safe during extreme heat.

Doctor Alister Martin, commissioner of the Health Department. Source 1.

Why these 3 neighborhoods have the highest risk

These 3 buildings sit in neighborhoods that the Heat Vulnerability Index, a Health Department ranking of which areas face the highest risk from extreme heat, already ranks among the highest in the city. The annual mortality report published by the Health Department shows why that ranking matters in human terms. The June 11 press release states that Black New Yorkers die of heat stress at 2 times the rate of white New Yorkers, but the mortality report itself, read in full rather than summarized in the release, gives 2 separate figures for 2 separate groups. Black New Yorkers die of direct heat stress at 3 times the rate of white New Yorkers, and Latino New Yorkers die at 2 times the rate, a gap the report ties largely to who does and does not have working air conditioning at home.

How many New Yorkers heat kills each year

Heat kills more New Yorkers each year than any other natural hazard the city faces. About 500 New Yorkers die of heat related causes every summer, the Health Department says. Most of those deaths are indirect, heat worsening an existing illness rather than causing heat stroke itself, about 490 a year on average from 2014 to 2023, about 3% of all deaths across the warm season months of May through September. The direct form, heat stress deaths counted straight from death certificates and medical examiner reports, averaged 7 a year from 2016 to 2025, 71 total over the decade. 2025 was the worst year for that direct count in a decade, 21 deaths, still provisional as of March 2026, 19 of them from a single 4 day heat wave in June.

Extreme heat is becoming more frequent, lasting longer, and arriving earlier in the year than ever before.

Christina Farrell, Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management. Source 1.

What using these centers means for a New Yorker this week

Turning 3 buildings that already provide public health services in these specific neighborhoods into cooling centers adds capacity precisely where the numbers published by the Health Department say the risk concentrates. Outside the cooling center role, the Brownsville, East Harlem and Tremont centers keep offering the same public health and social services the rest of the year, including naloxone education and maternal and family health services, so a resident already familiar with the building for another reason now has another reason to walk in during a heat wave. A resident who wants the nearest cooling center anywhere in the city, not just these 3, can call 311.