As this winter’s frigid snap took up an extended residence over New York City, it presented the first urgent crisis for Zohran Mamdani’s fledgling administration.

Tragically, 18 people perished in the deep freeze — at least 15 directly from hypothermia — which has triggered City Council hearings yet no mea culpa from our mayor.

Despite the dangerous temperatures, Mamdani said people would not be required to take shelter; he also ordered the NYPD to stop taking down homeless encampments. Only as a “last resort” would someone be forced inside.

Among those who died was Frederick Jones, who was found in front of a D’Agostino supermarket at 35th Street and Third Avenue on the morning of January 25.

“He was loved,” his sister Valerie Atkins of Rosedale, Queens, told The Post. She fondly recalled how the brother she called Freddy had a “gentle spirit.”

“It’s almost impossible to put into words how many people shared the same story: Whenever they saw Freddy, he would often ask them if they needed anything,” their sibling Teresa Belcher-Ledbetter echoed.

Jones was loved. And he actually had a home, thanks in part to the taxpayers of New York.

The 67-year-old lived in subsidized housing in Midtown, about a mile from where he perished.

“I just don’t know why he was outside,” his court-appointed guardian Shonell McKinley told The Post. “He had a roof over his head. He had an apartment.”

Jones’ choice to spend time on the streets — even in the bitter cold, even when he had a place of his own — underscores just how hard it is to manage the problem of homelessness.

By the most basic metric, Jones could have been viewed as a success story. After living for many years on the streets, where he struggled with alcoholism and mental illness, he was able to land permanent housing in 2017 at the Times Square, a supportive residential building run by the nonprofit Breaking Ground.

McKinley said Jones’ SRO apartment — one of more than 5,000 units Breaking Ground manages —........

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