I help people with psychosis off the streets. Sometimes, their minds won’t let them leave

As a mental health chaplain in New York, I help people leave homelessness. But mental illness, bureaucracy and a fragile system often pull them back The apartment came up on the city’s alert system: a studio on a leafy street, one block from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The location is extremely desirable – it would be a score for any single person hunting for their first New York rental, let alone someone who had spent years in the shelter system. But Diane, my client, rejects it outright. “As I’ve told you,” she says, “the prophecy apartment is on 40th and Amsterdam.” I remind her again that the intersection of 40th Street and Amsterdam Avenue does not exist in New York City. I suggest, gently, that this might still be worth seeing. We’re seated close together in my tiny airless office in the basement of a church, a space so small it once served as a clothing closet. Diane starts doing the thing where her eyes shift an inch above my head to address the voices and spirits that follow her throughout her days. This morning it’s Dionne Warwick, who reliably serves as the harbinger of any news that will jeopardize Diane’s fulfillment of “the prophecy”, which she

Mar 17, 2026 → Apr 3, 2026