Headway seen on Mass and Cass
Workers seek to give aid before taking down tents
Multiple initiatives around Mass and Cass are moving ahead, as the city begins to notice people about tent removals, the trial court sets up to begin its “community response” sessions there on Monday and prosecutors mull using more “stay-away” orders for people charged with crimes.
Officials from Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration told reporters on Friday that they’ve worked out their “encampment policy” as Janey’s executive order last week required, so they could begin giving notice to the hundreds of people on the street “as soon as” later that day.
The policy includes giving the “unsheltered individuals” in a tent 48 hours notice, contacting them multiple times and working to match them up with a shelter or treatment bed before removing the tent, officials said.
The city conducted a count last week of people on the street, taking down info and asking for answers to questions of what they are looking for. Officials said they counted 350 different people there at the time, 85% of whom told the outreach workers that they’d been sleeping on the street the night before.
The city has previously said there are upward of 150 tents in the troubled part of the South End’s Newmarket area known as Methadone Mile or Mass and Cass. There, near the eponymous intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard — or, more accurately now, down Southampton Street and on the side streets off of it, an open-air illicit drug market has thrived for years, and this summer seriously intensified, with a dirty and dangerous tent city springing up there over the course of just a few months.
Recently, Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office sought and received a “stay-away order” for a woman charged with lighting a tent on fire in the area. The woman, Jacqueline Phillips, who’s charged with burning personal property, is forbidden to go back to a specifically delineated area around Mass and Cass as her case moved forward, according to court documents.
Asked if she’s considering using more stay-away orders in the area, Rollins said “everything’s on the table.” Such orders would have exceptions for people seeking services in the area, such as at the methadone clinics.
“It is not the intent of this collaborative work to criminalize mental health issues, substance use disorder and homelessness. If enforcement action is required, we will continue to work with all of our partners to identify the best outcomes for the individual before us and the community at large,” Rollins said.
Stay-away orders have made the headlines here before, mostly in situations in which judges targeted outof-town protestors during the protests last summer over racial issues following the killing of George Floyd, and during the previous summer when authorities charged counterprotesters at the Straight Pride Parade. In that latter instance, a judge from the bench in Boston told some criminally charged counterprotesters to “stay out of Boston.”