Jonathan Davis-Turner
Jonathan Davis-Turner sleeps each night outside The Beacon, one of Houston’s homeless service centers.
The 43-year-old man says he doesn’t want to be on the street forever and has attempted to apply for housing. But Davis-Turner represents the kind of chronically homeless people who experts say are difficult to care for in most homeless provider systems.
He was released from a psychiatric facility on Nov. 3, according to his discharge prescription paperwork. He said homelessness “made me crazy,” adding, “I just do whatever this little voice tell me to do in my head. … I can’t help it.”
(NOTE: Date of birth and hospital identification information have been concealed for privacy reasons.)
Sometimes, the little voice tells him to break into cars and steal, he said, sometimes it tells him not to take his medicine.
One of his biggest complaints about living on the street is the rats, which he said were big and bold enough to steal his food at night. “The rats, they some good thieves,” he said. “If they were human beings, they would be rich, because they would steal up everything.”
