Mass and Cass movement as Baker group meets
Officials call for immediate action to resolve crisis
Multiple efforts are moving forward on Mass and Cass, with the governor’s heavy-hitter roundtable convening again, a new community-led working group starting back up and the Suffolk County sheriff forging ahead with his plan to house homeless addicts in an unused building at the South Bay jail.
“We will be ready in short order,” Sheriff Steve Tompkins told the Herald on Tuesday, saying he’s “in conversations with anybody who will take my call” in terms of people who could help transform South Bay’s “building eight” into a place addicts are sent to begin recovery.
Tompkins’ plan to use the building that formerly was used for federal immigration detainees has drawn fire from various advocates including U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, but Tompkins asserted, “What’s your plan? Until they come up with something, I’m going to keep moving ahead with mine.”
The sheriff was a common thread between two highprofile meetings that took place Tuesday around the dangerous open-air drug market in the South End’s Newmarket area. In the first one, Gov. Charlie Baker reconvened a roundtable of power players aimed at addressing the issues at what’s known as Mass and Cass or Methadone Mile — bringing together the city, state, district attorney, attorney general, courts and more for the second time in two weeks.
Tompkins, speaking a few hours later after he too attended the meeting, said he felt good about the conversation, which he said largely focused on how to get people moving off the streets and to whatever supporting housing or recovery programs they would be headed toward — whether that’s Tompkins’ building, the former Shattuck hospital, or something else.
The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. Neither did Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s.
On Tuesday evening, an alliance of civic organizations led by Steve Fox of South End Forum and Sue Sullivan of Newmarket Business Association held the first meeting of a Mass-and-Cass-focused working group that’s been dormant for the past couple of years. The public forum had been on pause, deferring to the cityrun Mass and Cass Task Force since 2019, but the neighborhood groups started it back up after the task force ground to a dysfunctional halt this summer.
“We’ve been playing at the margins in terms of this crisis,” Fox said at the start of the meeting. He told the Herald the idea is for these meetings to help inform the city and state responses to the problems in the area.
A lot of the talk centered around Tompkins’ plan, with elected officials including City Councilor Frank Baker and other big names like former state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry, now of Suffolk Construction, expressing support for something like it.
“We need to be thinking out of the box,” Forry said.
Both Baker and Forry suggested using the Nashua Street jail instead of the South Bay building right next to Methadone Mile, with one of the hospitals downtown managing it, but Tompkins said there would be significant logistical issues there, including in keeping this new population separate from the people incarcerated.
Similarly suggesting openness to a plan like this, state Rep. Liz Miranda stressed, “We have to do something immediately.”