Sick rats and live roosters
Plus city workers catch nasty stomach bug on Methadone Mile
Multiple city workers on Mass and Cass have ended up in the hospital in recent weeks with a nasty stomach bug as sanitary conditions on Methadone Mile reach an all-time low, the workers’ union says as reports from the Mile include sick rats and live roosters.
One worker at the Boston Public Health Commission’s “engagement center” who wished to remain anonymous told the Herald he’d caught a brutal illness that laid him out for the entirety of last week. It wasn’t the coronavirus, as he tested negative — and the symptoms were those of a stomach bug rather than respiratory disease, anyway.
“This place is not the cleanest place in the world, fruit flies everywhere. You got rats running around everywhere,” the worker said, adding that in his mind it doesn’t make sense that there would be a cluster of illness among his compatriots that came from anywhere but there. “This is what we’re dealing with right now.”
He said at least two of his coworkers, like him, ended up in the hospital on an IV with stomach issues. Another two gutted it out at home with similar but slightly less severe symptoms, he said.
The Boston Public Health Commission declined to comment on any illnesses, saying it doesn’t release information about employees’ health. The BPHC didn’t comment further on any diseases down on the Mile other than to stress that they’re taking COVID precautions for their workers.
The BPHC’s engagement center is effectively a large tent out behind a homeless shelter in the heart of the open-air drug market in the South End known as Mass and Cass or Methadone Mile. The center is meant to provide a controlled space away from the surrounding chaos, a place where the people living on the streets in the dangerous and dirty area can come for some peace and safety. The workers, like the one who got sick, are largely responsible for making sure people behave — no weapons, no violence, no shooting up.
The worker stressed the rat problem there — “big as dogs” — and said he’d recently seen a clearly diseased rat with sores walking over people on the ground, while rats usually run away from humans.
The bosses of the worker’s union, SEIU 888, backed him up, saying the same about the workers hospitalized and the conditions there.
“We’re in a situation where the place is so unhealthy that even the rodents are getting sick,” business manager Neal O’Brien told the Herald. “That’s an indicator of what’s going on down there.”
And SEIU 888 President Tom McKeever seconded that, saying, “For our members, it’s hell on earth. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the folks on the street.”
The BPHC said in a statement that “we take the health and safety of our staff seriously.” They said masks and gloves are available, and that the commission has created a new “Employee Safety Officer” position. They also said they have “integrated pest management services” to do battle against the rats.
Sue Sullivan of the Newmarket Business Association, who puts together an ad-hoc cleaning crew every couple of days, said she pays a handful of the people living on the street to pick up trash and otherwise spruce up the area — and she said that some of them are in consideration for cleaning jobs because of it.
She noted the “huge proliferation of rodents,” especially following the boom in tents, and said, “It is amazing that more people haven’t become sick.”
There’s the obviously unsanitary occurrences, like people pooping in public and food rotting on the sidewalks after being dropped off by the armies of do-gooders who show up periodically. And then there’s the just plain weird, like the rooster that had to be taken out of someone’s tent the other day.
“I thought I had seen everything,” she said, “but I hadn’t.”