This piece is a part of Overlooked, a collection of obituaries dedicated to extraordinary individuals whose passings have gone unnoticed in The Times since 1851.
Joyce Brown’s time in New York lasted longer than most. Formerly a secretary, she became homeless in 1986 and began living on a heating grate at Second Avenue and 65th Street in Manhattan.
About a year later, city officials intervened, involuntarily committed her to a psychiatric facility, where she was diagnosed with a mental illness and compelled to take medication. Known primarily as Billie Boggs, Brown was the first homeless individual targeted by Mayor Edward I. Koch’s expanded program addressing the visible homelessness and untreated mental health issues in the city.
However, as she later expressed in interviews, the city had chosen “the wrong one.” Unlike many others who found themselves in similar situations, she was aware of her rights and was determined to assert them the very next day.
This led to a groundbreaking lawsuit focusing on mental health, civil rights, and the forced psychiatric care of homeless individuals. “I’m not insane,” Brown would declare. “Just homeless.”
Soon, Brown transitioned from the streets to the spotlight, appearing in numerous interviews on talk and news shows.
By the time she passed away from a heart attack on November 29, 2005, at the age of 58, she had mostly faded from public memory.
Yet, the impact of her brief fame still resonates on the city’s streets and public transit, as Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have launched initiatives aimed at tackling homelessness in New York, including the involuntary hospitalization of individuals in mental health crises.
Joyce Patricia Brown was born on September 7, 1947, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the youngest of six siblings, most of whom were born in South Carolina and Florida.
In 1950, her father, William Brown, informed census takers that he was out of work. Her mother, Mae Blossom Brown, was employed in a factory assembling luggage.
After graduating high school, Joyce Brown worked as a secretary for the Elizabeth Human Rights Commission, potentially gaining some insight into her constitutional rights. She also served as a clerk for the mayor of Elizabeth at the time, Thomas G. Dunn, and worked at Thomas & Betts, an electrical equipment company, according to her death notice from Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth.
By age 18, however, she had become addicted to cocaine and heroin, resorting to stealing from her mother. The death of her mother in 1979 likely exacerbated her emotional decline, according to relatives.
In 1985, she had lost her job and alternated living with her sisters in New Jersey while briefly receiving treatment in clinics and hospitals. Tensions with her sisters led to her decision to move to Manhattan in 1986, where she settled on the sidewalk near a Swensen’s ice cream shop on the Upper East Side, often relieving herself outdoors.
She took on the name Billie Boggs, a quirky tribute to Bill Boggs, a television host on WNEW (now WNYW), who had captivated her.
To some locals and regular commuters, she became an iconic New Yorker, someone you wouldn’t find in a tourist guide; they would chat with her about current events. However, others found her behavior disruptive—she would shout racial slurs, particularly towards Black men, and even physically attack people.
Her sisters attempted to have her admitted to a hospital, but doctors determined she posed no threat to herself and released her.
On October 12, 1987, after being observed for months under a Koch administration initiative called Project HELP (Homeless Emergency Liaison Project), which aimed to remove severely mentally ill homeless individuals from the streets and provide them with medical assistance, she was taken to Bellevue Hospital’s emergency room. There, she was administered a tranquilizer and an anti-psychotic medication.
The following day, as reported in a 1988 New York magazine article, she called the New York Civil Liberties Union from a payphone in the hospital. Norman Siegel, the executive director of the organization, became one of the lawyers representing her. In court, a psychiatrist from Bellevue diagnosed her with “chronic paranoid schizophrenia.”
That evening, one of her sisters recognized her from a courtroom sketch broadcasted on the news.
The contrast between that broadcast and a family photograph was striking; the latter depicted a joyful Brown in a red dress, adorned with gold earrings, being embraced by a man in a tuxedo with a pink bow tie, surrounded by her smiling sisters.
“This used to be my sister,” one sister remarked to Newsday. “This used to be us.”
A State Supreme Court judge determined that Brown was “not unable to care for her essential needs,” thus ordering her release. However, she remained at Bellevue while the city appealed the ruling. The city ultimately won the appeal, but following another appeal by Brown’s attorneys, a judge ruled against her forced medication. The appeal was later dropped when Bellevue released Brown, stating there was no reason for her to remain if she couldn’t receive care. She had spent a total of 84 days at the hospital.
She soon became a media sensation, symbolizing justice as her lawyers claimed she presented herself as a coherent example of urban camping who had been, in her words, “under surveillance” for months “like I was a criminal.”
“In a civilized society, you don’t just pick people up against their will and take them to the hospital when they’re sane just because of a mayor’s initiative,” she explained to Morley Safer during a 1988 segment for CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” “This is all political. I am a political prisoner because of Mayor Koch.”
During the same segment, Mayor Koch asserted that defecating on the street was “bizarre” and…
It was noted that Brown’s articulate speaking on camera highlighted the success of her hospitalization and the treatment she received.
That same year, Brown made an appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” after being dressed by Bloomingdale’s. She also delivered a talk at a Harvard Law School forum, sharing her perspective on homelessness. Following this, the New York Civil Liberties Union received numerous book and film proposals. The Associated Press described her as “the most famous homeless person in America.” During a summit in Moscow with Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1988, President Ronald Reagan used her situation to illustrate the concept of freedom, contrasting it with Moscow’s treatment of political dissidents diagnosed as mentally ill.
“Instead of discussing me, why doesn’t the president help me secure permanent housing?” Brown was reported to have said.
Following Brown’s case, Project HELP faced criticism and public inquiry. The initiative lost its momentum and was ultimately shut down. Brown’s lawsuit remains a significant reference in discussions relating to mental health, homelessness, and civil rights.
After her release, Brown took a short-lived position as a secretary at the civil liberties union but left the job, citing dissatisfaction.
“The spirited personality I once admired seemed to fade,” Siegel remarked about her in an interview.
She gained weight, became slower in her movements, and possibly returned to medication for a time. Around 1991, she moved into a supervised group home for women who had been homeless, yet she also returned to street life to beg for money, claiming that her sisters had delayed sending her over $8,000 in Social Security benefits. Living on $500 a month in disability income, she chose to avoid the media.
When Brown was initially released from Bellevue, it was against the advice of two dissenting justices from the State Supreme Court. “We may be approaching a time,” they wrote, “when we will address the issue of homelessness with genuine and practical approaches and resources.”
“As it stands now,” Siegel noted, “35 years later, the hopes expressed by the dissenting justices have regrettably not come to fruition.”
