What John’s Journey Reveals About the Systemic Neglect that Failed Jordan Neely
He told me he was hearing voices again.
A man I’ll call “John” was standing on a Manhattan sidewalk. He was in his mid-to-late fifties, well-dressed, and obviously frustrated. He looked past me as he spoke and shuffled his weight from side to side.
I asked him if this was something he hadn’t experienced in a while. He explained that he started hearing voices in his twenties. But he got the help he needed at the time because he had a job with great health insurance. He worked there for 20 years. Then Covid landed, the company shut down, and he lost everything. At the time of our conversation, he was sleeping in a shelter, trying desperately to find a new job ever since. His new insurance wouldn’t cover the medication he needed, and he hadn’t taken any meds in over six months.
John was almost in tears. Like so many others I know, he was caught in the often-inescapable vortex of being unemployed, uninsured, untreated, and unhoused.
The Reality of Navigating Hostile Systems
I am the CEO of a nonprofit called City Relief. Every week, we host six outreach events in New York City and New Jersey to meet unhoused people and connect them to stable housing, effective mental healthcare, or anything they need to achieve their goals. I have spent most of the last 15 years building relationships with people experiencing homelessness, helping them navigate the apathetic and often hostile systems that govern the lives of poor people in America.
These experiences form my reaction to the recent acquittal of Daniel Penny, who was on trial for killing a homeless man named Jordan Neely on the Subway. Penny’s lawyers argued that the several-minute-long chokehold Penny used was justified because Neely was a threat to the people around him. Neely had gotten on the train and yelled several things, like that he was hungry and thirsty, wanted to return to jail, and didn’t care if he died. Penny’s lawyers also claimed the chokehold did not kill Neely; the drugs found in his system did (the medical examiner determined the chokehold was the cause of death).
While I don’t know the ins and outs of New York’s criminal laws, I was not at all surprised that a jury concluded the homicide of a Black, unhoused man with chronic mental health issues did not check any legal box of criminality. Neither did it shock me that nobody on a train thought to address Neely’s hunger and thirst with food or water. Both reflect our society’s extreme indifference to the circumstances of people like Neely.
Dispelling Myths About Homelessness
As I argue extensively in my book, we are comfortable with this indifference for a number of reasons. One of those is the persistent myth that unhoused people have the problems they do primarily because of their own poor choices, laziness, or moral failures. But the myth couldn’t be further from the truth.
I asked John if he was at the point with his mental health where he might hurt himself or others. He shook his head and explained that he had gone to the ER, where they had asked him the same question. Since he didn’t feel he was an imminent threat, they just discharged him and told him to see someone outpatient. He found someone his insurance would cover, but the earliest appointment he could get was eight to twelve weeks out!
I recommended that he return to the ER and tell them a different story. If he ended up on the street or the voices got louder and more pervasive, he certainly would be returning very quickly.
I got John transportation to the closest ER that was in network for his cut-rate insurance. My social worker colleague called him and gave him some advice on getting his mental health the attention it needed.
John was a man taking every step he had in his power to take. Yet, he couldn’t find the services he needed even though he lived in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country that has ever existed.
Experienced professionals had to help him manipulate the system to get what he required to survive.
If you didn’t know that John’s story is typical of unhoused people, you might have believed the myths about laziness or poor moral choices regarding Jordan Neely. You might think Neely’s death was the unavoidable consequence of his decision-making or even that he got what he deserved. In truth, it is our collective failure to adequately address systemic issues like housing and mental health challenges that lead to someone like Neely seeking comfort in substances or yelling for help on a subway car.
We were able to help John get the support that he needed before it was too late. I wish I could say the same thing about Jordan Neely.
