After reading the article, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins called Mr. Daley’s half brother — the two men share a father — still in the Bronx. She called her father, who lives in Brooklyn. She emailed and called me.

“Please help me locate him to bring him home for the love and care he deserves,” she wrote.

But just before the article was published, Mr. Daley had been tossed into the streets. I had given Mr. Daley a prepaid cellphone so I could stay in touch with him. But he could not seem to remember how to use it, even though I had shown him repeatedly. I had not seen him since the end of May. I figured he had joined the legions of homeless people on the city’s streets, many of them struggling with mental illness.

After the article, the city formed an emergency task force, inspected dozens of three-quarter homes and moved many residents from overcrowded homes into hotels.

But others were left behind. Mr. Daley had fallen through every possible crack.

Losing a Home and Help

Ms. Boyce-Gaskins thought of herself as Mr. Daley’s guardian. After their mother left them with their great-grandmother in Thomaston, Ga., a town of about 10,000, she talked to her children on the phone, but rarely saw them.

Mr. Daley moved in with Ms. Boyce-Gaskins after she graduated from high school. But it did not last. “I needed help from his father,” she recalled. “It ended up he got into trouble, and I couldn’t carry the load at that time. His dad stepped up.”

At 16, he moved to Brooklyn with his father, a city sanitation worker and artist. Eventually, the two moved into the basement of Mr. Daley’s aunt’s home, in the East New York neighborhood. At some point, Mr. Daley had his first psychotic break. He was soon given a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.