City officials seem outmatched by the growing crisis at Mass and Cass, prompting community stakeholders to ponder involuntary treatment and forced relocation.

As cold weather begins to assert itself once more, the drug market at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard grows only more persistent.

The spot has enough unhoused residents to disrupt traffic and overwhelm the city’s bolstered assistance programs despite ineffectual ordinances against encampments. With still more occupants flooding in and no end in sight, both government officials and the local community are considering more extreme measures.

That turn was apparent at an October 11 meeting of the Mass and Cass Task Force, a broad forum gathering residents, businesses, civic groups and government workers to publicly discuss the issue.

For the past year the focus has been on outreach and ramping up housing programs, but the number of success stories that’s produced is dwarfed by new arrivals.

Now relocation, involuntary treatment and ways to disincentivize towns from sending their homeless to Boston are the issues getting top billing.

“I was at Mass and Cass today and there was a whole traffic lane filled with people. The entire sidewalk is packed. Everyone from surrounding towns come to Boston to drink, to hang out and cause trouble, and these towns have deaf ears when it comes to helping us” said Clayton Turnbull, founder and CEO of the Waldwin group. “At some point we need to ask what we can do to move this along. We need to take these people and put them in a new campus built to help them.”

Elected officials, long averse to taking coercive measures against the residents of the intersection, have also shifted their language somewhat.

“‘Involuntary treatment’ has a wide range of meanings. I think it’s only the most severe of implementations that so many of us are opposed to. There are lesser levels of involuntary treatment that we’d all agree are appropriate.

I’ve heard firsthand from people who have recovered from substance abuse disorders that it was involuntary treatment that saved their life,” said Suffolk County district attorney Kevin Hayden.

Sue Sullivan, Executive Director of the Newmarket Business Improvement District, echoed that sentiment. She said that officials would be on the back foot until the flow of people is cut off at the source, noting that one woman arrested by police for involuntary treatment was back on the street “in two days.”

“As long as we allow it, they’re going to keep coming. We have to figure out how we’re going to incentivize or penalize these other cities and towns that are sending people to Boston. They’re told to come here because there are services and because they can do drugs on the street,” said Sullivan. “If we look at it as involuntary treatment, then it’s involuntary treatment that’s necessary. While many say you can’t force people into treatment, I have dozens who say to me, ‘If I wasn’t forced to stop doing what I was doing, I wouldn’t be alive today.’”

Meanwhile winter weather is fast approaching and the situation continues to deteriorate. The number of people has only grown since last year, and ordinances put in place by the Wu administration against encampments have only ensured those encampments are mobile enough to avoid regular police sweeps.

Officials are more recently grappling with charity groups that regularly hand out free food at the intersection, leaving behind what police Sgt.Peter Messina called “unbelievable” amounts of trash.

“It’s making things beyond uncomfortable for the community. I went to Home Depot last night and I wasn’t able to use the restroom because people continue to use it as a safe injection site,” said Domingos DaRosa. “Our neighborhood is dying. I lose kids every other football practice from having men run around with their genitals out. And that’s somehow not a priority one call.”