Mayor Michelle Wu praised improvements in public safety at Mass. and Cass, the problematic intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, at a press briefing last week, despite continuous resident complaints about increasing drug use in the area.

Wu hosted an impromptu meeting last Wednesday to provide an update on the public safety response to drug use and drug dealing in the city. The update consisted largely of increasing police presence in drug hotspots. Though the meeting was intended to be about the Downtown, Wu and other officials specifically noted improvements at Mass. and Cass, which is widely considered to be the center of Boston’s drug problem.

“We’ve made some significant progress on ending and preventing the reestablishment of permanent encampments in the city, which was a very dangerous situation for both individuals who were seeking treatment as well as residents in the surrounding area,” Wu said.

Wu said her administration had put in 200 units of supportive housing to take in people displaced by the Mass. and Cass encampment clearing in 2022. This, she said, had allowed the city’s Coordinated Response Team to help more drug users off the street and into treatment.

But residents of the South End have been saying for months in public forums and meetings that that’s not the case.

Jonathan Ortloff, a neighborhood resident, posted a photo in December of two syringes lying on the pavement to an expansive Facebook group called the South End Community Board.

“Right on Tremont Street this morning,” Ortloff wrote in the caption of the photo. “Hey Mayor Wu, how is this not your top priority? The bleeding of Mass and Cass drugs, graffiti, etc. into our neighborhood is making my family consider moving out of Boston. It has been ten years since Long Island [Bridge] shut down. There is no excuse for not dealing with this.”

Another resident posted on the forum in January that she had found an uncapped needle in O’Day Playground on West Newton Street. A third said she had discovered one in the snow while walking her dog on Warren Avenue

The Boston Herald reported earlier this year that the violence, open-air drug use and squatting around Mass. and Cass that is usually quelled by cold weather has instead been growing.

At a meeting of a nearly decade-old working group fighting drugs and violence at Mass. and Cass, one attendee said that incidents of both had increased. He added that the situation was “dire.”

Residents in other neighborhoods have begun complaining about spillover effects from Mass. and Cass leeching into other areas of Boston. Rishi Shukla, a Downtown community leader, told Boston.com that the neighborhood was dealing with a “mini Mass. and Cass” on Boston Common.

Mayor Wu and other officials did not comment on such observations in the press briefing. When asked whether her public safety update constituted a new approach to the city’s handling of the area, Wu said, “The approach throughout our time in office has been to do what’s needed to change the underlying dynamic of a very long-standing issue. What you’re hearing now is part of the ongoing evolving strategy to meet the evolving needs that are presented in the community as we take steps forward in a very complex challenge.”