Campbell calls for Mass & Cass ‘czar’
Cabinet-level post would focus on improving area
Mayoral hopeful Andrea Campbell said the city needs to create a Methadone Mile czar and a more focused team to improve conditions in the troubled area known as Mass & Cass.
Campbell, a city councilor who’s vying for the city’s top job, went on a walk around the area near the intersections of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue as she announced what her plan would be for the area, which increasingly has become a haven for drug use, homelessness and violence.
“The public health crisis at Mass & Cass has been building for years, but has been exacerbated by COVID-19, threatening the health and safety of everyone in the neighborhood. It demands immediate leadership and action,” Campbell said in a statement.
“My approach,” she added, “will establish dedicated leadership by appointing a cabinet-level Mass & Cass Chief to drive a coordinated, public health response and decentralization plan that will build sustainable paths to recovery citywide and ensure the health and safety of all who live, work, visit, and go to school in this neighborhood.”
The portion of the South End is commonly known as “Methadone Mile,” due to the methadone clinics located there, though the city and advocates call it “Mass & Cass” in an effort to be more positive.
For years, it’s been home to a great deal of vagrancy and drug use — and residents there say it’s only gotten worse, leading to recent neighborhood protests there over perceived inaction. Every day, crowds gather there, with some openly shooting up.
Campbell said she’d appoint a public-health professional to be “Mass & Cass Chief,” which would be a full member of her cabinet. The idea would be to better focus services for the area.
In the same vein, she said she’d create a “dedicated Mass & Cass first responder unit,” which would be com- posed of public health and recovery service profession- als as well as first respond- ers. That would be in an effort to “streamline response efforts and better protect people living and working in the neighbor- hood, service providers working in the area, and vulnerable residents spending time at the intersection.”
She said she’d push to build the Long Island Bridge, as current Mayor Martin Walsh has, but in the meantime she’d work on creating a ferry service to the spot where the city intends to build major addiction treatment facilities. The city of Quincy, which owns part of the land where the bridge to the island would go, has fought that plan tooth and nail, but officials there recently said they’d be happy to partner with Boston on a ferry, according to The Patriot Ledger.
Walsh, who appears to be on his way out as mayor because he’s President Biden’s pick for Labor secretary, created a task force a year and a half ago to focus on the area. The task force is prioritizing decentralization and bathrooms for the area, where residents often complain about human waste.