{"id":26975,"date":"2025-05-01T21:15:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T21:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26975"},"modified":"2025-05-01T21:26:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T21:26:57","slug":"overlooked-no-more-joyce-brown-whose-struggle-redefined-the-rights-of-the-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26975","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked No More: Joyce Brown, Whose Struggle Redefined the Rights of the Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"
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She successfully challenged her involuntary commitment to Bellevue Hospital in 1987, setting a precedent for homeless people that remains relevant today.<\/p>\n

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This article is part of <\/em>Overlooked<\/em><\/a>, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Joyce Brown\u2019s New York minute lasted longer than most. A onetime secretary, Brown became homeless in 1986 and began camping on a heating grate on Second Avenue and 65th Street in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

A year or so passed before she was picked up by city officials, involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital \u2014 where she was declared mentally ill \u2014 and forcibly given medication. Brown, who was better known as Billie Boggs, was the first homeless person to become the focus of Mayor Edward I. Koch\u2019s newly expanded initiative to address the increasing visibility of homelessness and untreated mental illness on the streets.<\/p>\n

But, as she would later say in interviews, the city chose \u201cthe wrong one.\u201d Unlike the dozen or so other people who would face similar fates, she said she knew her rights, and she would begin exercising them the very next day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What followed was a landmark lawsuit centered on mental health, civil liberties and the involuntary psychiatric treatment of homeless people. \u201cI\u2019m not insane,\u201d Brown would say. \u201cJust homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before long, Brown was lofted from the pavement to prominence, with a whirlwind of interviews on talk and news programs.<\/p>\n

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She successfully challenged her involuntary commitment to Bellevue Hospital in 1987, setting a precedent for homeless people that remains relevant today.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Joyce Brown\u2019s New York minute lasted longer than most. A onetime secretary, Brown became homeless in 1986 and began camping on a heating grate on Second Avenue and 65th Street in Manhattan.A year or so passed before she was picked up by city officials, involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital \u2014 where she was declared mentally ill \u2014 and forcibly given medication. Brown, who was better known as Billie Boggs, was the first homeless person to become the focus of Mayor Edward I. Koch\u2019s newly expanded initiative to address the increasing visibility of homelessness and untreated mental illness on the streets.But, as she would later say in interviews, the city chose \u201cthe wrong one.\u201d Unlike the dozen or so other people who would face similar fates, she said she knew her rights, and she would begin exercising them the very next day.What followed was a landmark lawsuit centered on mental health, civil liberties and the involuntary psychiatric treatment of homeless people. \u201cI\u2019m not insane,\u201d Brown would say. \u201cJust homeless.\u201dBefore long, Brown was lofted from the pavement to prominence, with a whirlwind of interviews on talk and news programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26977,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26975"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26978,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26975\/revisions\/26978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}