In a series of recent online meetings, city officials met to discuss the homelessness and drug abuse problem on Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, commonly known as Methadone Mile.
In a November 9 Zoom meeting, a team of city officials, consisting of representatives from the Boston Public Health Commission, police and fire departments, the mayor’s office, homeless shelter Pine Street Inn and others, presented the progress that they have made on the problem to residents of the South End and Roxbury.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city has focused on emergency housing for homeless individuals, housing 205 individuals since May.
Pine Street Inn has also entered into a one-year lease with the Best Western hotel on Mass Ave. to provide housing. In addition, the Office of Recovery Services has set up comfort stations to provide COVID testing, restrooms and clinical care for homeless individuals.
However, the city has had trouble moving forward with the problem, which Mayor Marty Walsh attributed to more widespread issues throughout the state.
“A lot of the [recovery] programs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, when they release someone out and have nowhere to go, they release them to Boston and they end up in our services,” Walsh said. “These programs need to be spread around the state. We can’t take every single person in need.”
In a city council hearing on the issue November 17, Chief of Housing Sheila Dillon said that treatment systems throughout the state need to do a better job of stopping this from happening.
“The Boston Public Health Commission and Pine Street are doing much better data collection at the door to see where people are coming from,” Dillon said.
“We’re taking that information and feeding it back to the state.
You have to do a good job seeing people have the right supports before they’re discharged.”
The
city is looking at a few alternatives to curb the problem. One
possibility is developing permanent supportive housing units for
individuals exiting homelessness to live and receive treatment, in an
environment where they don’t face eviction if they relapse.
Boston
is also in an ongoing legal battle with the city of Quincy over the
right to build a bridge to Long Island, where they plan to open a
substance abuse treatment center.
“One of the challenges is that
it just can’t happen tomorrow,” said Lyndia Downie, president of Pine
Street Inn, in the community meeting. “I think the next two years is
going to be tough. When the hotel is no longer used for homeless people,
it doesn’t mean that the homeless people go away.”
While the city
and state search for solutions, residents of the area are still
concerned about the effects of the widespread drug use on their own
health and safety.
In a separate Zoom meeting following the city’s
meeting, members of the South End-Roxbury Community Partnership, an
activist group in the area, expressed frustration at the city’s lack of
progress on the Mass/Cass problem.
Many participants said they
felt that the meeting with city officials felt like the same information
they had heard many times before. “We continue to hear, ‘Be patient
with us, these individuals are sick, they need help, we’re working on
it.’ What are you working on?” said Yahaira Lopez, an organizer with the
group, in the meeting.
“We can’t focus on harm reduction while creating harm for our community.”
In
the city council hearing, City Councilor Julia Mejia praised the South
End-Roxbury Community Partnership and other activist groups for their
work, and said that the city needs to do a better job of engaging with
the people who are actually living in the area, both residents and
homeless individuals, to see what help they really need. “They’re not
deemed formal leaders, but they are street leaders,” Mejia said. “I’m
encouraging us to think outside of the box about who has a seat at the
table.”
