The Nation - News from Nov. 6, 1987

A poised, articulate homeless woman, the first person forcibly hospitalized under a new city policy in New York, told a judge she’s “a professional” at living on the street and will return there if she is released. Joyce Brown, who also calls herself Billy Boggs, appeared at a confinement hearing at Bellevue Hospital. The woman lived next to a hot-air duct on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She collected $8 to $10 a day in handouts, enough to buy a meal, and was given clothes by neighborhood residents, she said. The case of Brown, 40, is a key test of Mayor Edward I. Koch’s campaign to move more homeless people from the street to psychiatric wards.