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.”
