When the Cold Takes a Life

This past week, a Rock Island woman died inside an abandoned building in Moline, Illinois. Friends affectionately called her “Mama" and described her as warm and loving. After this article was first published, her daughter reached out and asked that her mother’s name be removed for now, as the family is still reeling from the loss and awaiting information from authorities. I have honored that request and will refer to her as Mama moving forward.

The news of her death traveled along a network of unhoused people. Some didn't know her name, but knew of her, others knew her and loved her, and all mourn her loss and consider what it means for their own survival.

In many ways, this is what death from cold exposure looks like in America.

It is quiet. It is unannounced. It is almost always invisible.

And yet, nothing about it is inevitable.

Cold Exposure Doesn’t Require Subzero Temperatures

Most people imagine hypothermia as a harsh blizzard event. The truth is far more mundane—and more devastating.

A person can die of cold exposure at 40–50°F, especially if they are sleeping on cold concrete, living in an unheated building, or wearing damp clothing. Bodies lose heat to the ground far faster than to the air. Exhaustion, illness, alcohol use, or hunger accelerate the process.

Cold doesn’t have to be dramatic to be deadly. It just has to be constant.

I first heard about Mama's death last night while visiting several unhoused people in downtown Rock Island. It was 26° F at 8:45 p.m. Snow was stacked along the sidewalks. The ground was wet.

A man I’ve come to know had reached out earlier in the evening, asking if I had any dry sleeping bags. His were soaked, and he had no way to dry them. He told me his wife had nearly died from cold exposure the night before, and both of them were terrified of trying to get through another night with damp bedding in freezing temperatures.

Near Project NOW, I met three other men and a woman who were camping together for safety and warmth. You can hear my conversations with them at the link at the end of this article. Johnny is the man who told me of Mama's passing.

One man tried to describe the cold to me. “It’s like—if I put my balls in a fucking goddamn jar, it would look like ice cubes, okay?” The language was raw, but the sentiment was clear: despite layers of clothing and piles of blankets, he said he woke up yesterday so chilled to the bone that he couldn’t walk for several hours.

This is the season when survival becomes a nightly calculation. A season when wet fabric, frozen ground, and single-digit wind chills turn the most ordinary tasks—sleeping, waking, walking—into acts of endurance.

For people without stable housing, the winter landscape is not measured in degrees. It’s measured in hours—how long you can make it through the night, where you can safely sleep, and whether you can stay warm enough until morning.

A Death With No Headlines

In communities across the country, a death like Mama’s rarely makes the news. There is no legal requirement that the public be notified when someone dies of cold exposure. If family is absent, estranged, or unknown, no obituary appears. The person disappears from public view twice: once in life, once in death.

This erasure has consequences.

When deaths go unreported, communities underestimate the scale and urgency of homelessness. Policymakers assume the safety net is functioning when it isn't. Winter shelters are underfunded or denied. Outreach teams are overstretched. The public is lulled into believing that the cold only takes lives during storms, not on a Tuesday in March or a Sunday in November.

But unhoused people know. They told me first. And they were right.

Why This Matters in Rock Island County

As homelessness is on the rise and cold temperatures have arrived, the Quad City area does not have an emergency winter overflow shelter for the first time in decades. The regular shelters are at maximum capacity.

We often talk about shelter as if it is interchangeable with safety. But safety for unhoused people is about more than being within four walls to sleep; it’s a chain of conditions:

• The shelter is open that night and has beds available.

• The person can get to it.

• The environment inside is safe enough for them to stay.

• Their belongings won’t be lost or stolen.

• Their trauma and needs are understood.

  
  

When any one link fails, people sleep outside, or in cars, or in abandoned buildings like the one where Mama died. Effective emergency shelters must be operated by individuals and agencies who understand that shelter is not simply the absence of the elements, but It is the presence of heat, dignity, stability, and trust. It is the possibility of a warm tomorrow with access to housing, healthcare, employment, family, and community. It is surviving long enough for a better future to unfold. It is Project Now's Lift Now Center securing permanent housing for 13 people it sheltered last winter and zero lives being lost over the harshest season.

Project Now has the capacity and funding to run a winter shelter this year, but with new ordinances in Rock Island limiting the ability of non-profits to serve the homeless, Project Now is searching for new locations throughout the Illinois Quad Cities.

The Cost of an Unseen Death

We don’t know Mama's story—not yet. But we know she mattered.

And we know her death reflects something about who we are as a community.

Deaths from cold exposure are preventable. This past week, our area had a snowstorm. Not only was there nowhere for unhoused people to sleep at night, but there was nowhere for people in Rock Island to go during the day.

The public library closed, social service agencies were closed for the holidays, and the bus station locked its doors to prevent folks from warming up inside. Death comes from a combination of cold and duration. No place to warm - day or night - equals dangerous conditions.

Too often, people “fall through the cracks” because the cracks are not accidental—they are structural. Cold alone does not kill. The absence of shelter kills. The absence of visibility kills (that's why you have people sleeping outside safe buildings rather than hidden under bridges or in the woods). The systems that treat housing as a privilege, not a right, kill.

Where We Go From Here

If we want to honor Mama, even without knowing her biography, we can honor her by refusing to let her death remain invisible.

We can ask hard questions:

• How many people in our county have died from cold exposure this year?

• Why don’t we track or publish this information?

• What would it take to ensure no one sleeps in a building without heat again?

• What investments, ordinances, or partnerships would actually prevent this?

• Why is our city spending more time preventing life-saving shelters from operating than it is working proactively to address homelessness and prevent loss of life?

  
  

The cold is not going away. But deaths like Mama’s can.

I agree that we need a regional approach to preventing and addressing homelessness.

I agree that each city — or at least each side of the river — must have both conventional shelters and an emergency shelter.

I agree that homelessness can create difficult conditions for businesses and residents when it becomes concentrated in specific areas.

And I agree that we need better mental-health care, better addiction services, and better long-term housing pathways.

All of that is true. AND it is also true that you cannot tear away the emergency safety nets before the long-term solutions exist.

Emergency shelters are not the final answer — but they are the thing that keeps people alive long enough for any future system to matter.

Rock Island needs to suspend the ordinance and open an emergency shelter this year and keep it running until a real, coordinated regional plan is in place.

You build the bridge before you ask people to cross.

You put up the guardrails before you open the road.

The same must be true for homelessness.

We can work toward better systems — but not at the cost of someone freezing to death while we plan them.

Informal conversation while ordering pizza for four people I met camping outside last night

Conversation with M & D about D's experience last night