City, state and federal officials are trying to assemble a pool of vacant apartments in New York City that could supplement the city’s shelter system in housing hundreds if not thousands of families displaced by storm damage and power outages.

Although many people have clung to their homes despite having neither heat nor hot water, particularly in city housing projects in Coney Island and the Rockaways, officials are worried that another wave of people will seek shelter as temperatures fall and they can no longer bear the cold.