Redeveloping Shattuck Hospital into a multifaceted campus featuring clinical services, emergency shelters and permanent supportive housing would not result in a Mass and Cass 2.0, according to officials overseeing the plan.
The project, not yet approved, would address some of the largest problems that have turned the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard into a drug-addled homeless encampment, officials say.
Shattuck Hospital would be replaced with three buildings at Franklin Park that could offer up to 446 treatment beds and 405 units of supportive housing for individuals and families.
Services would be integrated, and inpatient and outpatient clinical services would prioritize longer-term care for people recovering from opioid use, with those in acute treatment accounting for less than 10% of the population on site, said Rob Koenig, executive director of strategic programs for Boston Medical Center.
“We are confident that this site is not the next Mass and Cass because it is a different mix of programs and services that are designed to help with recovery and address the failure point in today’s model of care,” Koenig said. “That failure point is the root cause of a crisis like Mass and Cass – a broken treatment and recovery continuum, inadequate housing services for people who need them.”
BMC is spearheading the proposal with six other city-based health and social service providers. The Healey administration in June provisionally designated the coalition for redevelopment of the Shattuck campus, meaning project plans could start being refined.
The BMC-led coalition again presented plans Tuesday in a forum following an initial meeting in late July. An in-person open house on the project is scheduled for Sept. 19 at Lena Park Community Center in Dorchester.
Many of the planned offerings have been successful at the current Shattuck campus for many years, Koenig said. But the project looks to further improve integration of services as well as housing security for the homeless, he said.
Residents in supportive housing would receive case management, job training, counseling and other support services, while being responsible for rent.
Pine Street Inn, which would operate supportive housing units for individuals, deploys outreach workers to Mass and Cass to engage with people who live there. The proposed campus model could bring a lot of relief to the city’s housing and healthcare landscape, said Jan Griffin, the agency’s vice president of housing development.
“If we could solve homelessness, how would it happen? It would happen with a continuum that doesn’t have holes in it,” she said. “Many of the people who have ended up at Mass and Cass have fallen through the cracks in the system.”
Koenig said community safety is a top priority for the project. BMC’s internal team of public safety experts will form a plan with community partners, law enforcement and neighborhood residents, he said.
Some residents from Jamaica Plain and other nearby neighborhoods are still concerned about the possible dangers that may come if the project were to become reality.
“There’s a lot of collateral trauma placed on children and people living in the neighborhood of Mass and Cass that not anybody has addressed,” Karen Grundt said. “Why do we just want to see it get larger and in a different area?”