South End residents are saying enough is enough to the city’s response to the misery of Mass and Cass, and in particular a plan to add 30 shelter beds at a building under an overpass at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Albany Street.
“It’s a Band-Aid. And the medicine is worse than the disease,” said new state Rep. John Moran, who represents much of the South End, including this troubled area, as well as Lower Roxbury, of the proposal.
“It creates a fourth shelter in the south end, which we do not need. We’ve been promised to have decentralization here,” he said.
Moran and Boston City Council President Ed Flynn met with the president and vice president of the Worcester Square Area Neighborhood Association at the corner of East Concord and Albany streets at 7 a.m. Thursday to survey and discuss a city plan to open a new shelter in the 700-block of Albany Street that Mayor Michelle Wu is scheduled to unveil at 10 a.m. Friday.
It was still some 30 minutes until AHOPE — which is the Boston Public Health Commission’s Access, Harm Reduction, Overdose Prevention and Education harm reduction and needle exchange site at 774 Albany St. — would open, and the sidewalk was already packed with those looking for what the agency describes as a “range of service to active injection drug users.”
The small group watched the people, many of whom seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness in the early morning sun, mill about as Moran and the neighborhood association members spelled out just how bad the Mass and Cass open-air drug market situation was getting and their fears for the proposal
“We are the closest South End neighborhood association to this area. And it all spills in. I mean, we find needles in our backyards, we find people (defecating) on our steps,” Neighborhood Association VP George Stergios said following the walk.
Of particular concern to those in the tour was the continued centralization of the Massachusetts opioid epidemic to the South End area.
“I think the services in the South End must be decentralized and other cities and towns across New England need to get involved and support people in their communities with substance use issues,” Flynn said later by phone. “I don’t think Boston can continue to care for every person that comes into the city seeking assistance. We are compassionate people, but it’s having a devastating impact on the quality of life and for public safety in the city.”
“You’ve attracted the worst people all into one area. Some of them who are suffering … you hear their life story, you’d say I’d have a needle in my arm too. Other ones? No,” he said. “I mean there’s a lot of just jerks out there who prey on other people or people do stupid things, especially young men do lots of stupid things.”
He worried about the type of community that will form: “You’re going to attract a wide group of people over here and then who are looking for services, but these are addicts and therefore the dealers will follow.”
The walk crossed the busy intersection of Massachusetts Avenue at Albany street, where a semi truck blew past at more than 40 mph in the 25 mph zone — as indicated by an electronic speed indicator posted under the speed limit sign — underscoring a prevalent talking point on the situation.
“It’s basically not a well thought out solution. It’s going to cause public safety problems here,” Moran said, indicating the speeding truck as he talked about people crossing the street. “Yeah, these people are going to get killed. And I care about everybody. I come from a family of addiction. My brother died of a drug overdose. This is not theoretical; I know what’s going to happen.”
Mass and Albany is no Mass and Cass just yet, but there were some familiar sights, and smells. A woman hidden from the street behind some concrete road blocks shot up as the group talked. Liquid trailing from the far side of a support post smelled of urine.
The City Council will hear a Wu proposal on removing tents at Mass and Cass on Wednesday, and the new shelter idea could be a way to politically expedite that priority, the group discussed.
Flynn proposed a solution involving an increased presence in the area, which could be complicated by the sheer volume of overlapping jurisdictions or police districts in the affected area, and “enhanced basic city services,” including increased garbage pickup and “adding significantly more hokeys,” an old Boston term for a street sweeper, as well as care to affected nearby parks like Clifford Playground and Moakley Park, where Mass and Cass spillover has taken its toll.
Moran also has his own solution in mind:
“Let’s use Widett Circle and the Recover Boston plan, which will be better for patients and a continuum of care,” he said.
The plan, presented by leaders of Newmarket Business Improvement District and the South End Forum last week, would divert homeless individuals at Mass and Cass to short-term pallet-house communities at Widett Circle offering mental health, substance abuse, and housing and workforce development assistance, the Herald previously reported.
“We use that as a pilot up until, and only until, the Long Island phase one is open in four years,” he said, adding that the new shelter plan “is going backwards seven years. Let’s not go back. Let’s go forward.”
