Hub hooks up homeless with housing
But crowds, drugs remain at Mass and Cass
Mayor Michelle Wu said the city set 154 homeless people from Mass and Cass up with housing during its removal effort, though work — and crowds — remain in the troubled area where two death investigations are ongoing.
Wu held an hour-long press conference Thursday outside the Pine Street Inn shelter in the South End the morning after city workers swarmed around the Mass and Cass area a mile to the south, moving homeless out of the large entrenched encampments there and removing the dozens of tents present.
Police said no one was arrested in the operation. Wu said the only incident was a knife fight that cops “de-escalated.”
Wu, flanked by various officials from her administration including her Mass and Cass czar Dr. Monica Bharel and the area police outreach head BPD Lt. Peter Messina, said the city had hooked 154 people in Mass and Cass up with various short-term housing options, including ones created recently, like the cottages on the Shattuck Hospital campus or the Roundhouse hotel. Officials said people don’t have to be sober to remain in these places.
“This was truly grounded in public health and housing,” Wu told reporters.
She said the next step for the area in the South End also called Newmarket or, more disparagingly, Methadone Mile, is a deep cleaning over the next several days. The area, which has been covered in more than 100 tents since the summertime, became so filthy that nearby city workers and even rats were getting sick.
Wu said “we didn’t solve homelessness yesterday, but this is an important step because the encampments presented a very specific and particular set of dangers to residents and to our city. It was extremely unsafe to live in tents.”
She and Bharel said that anyone coming back to the area and trying to set up a tent will first be contacted by outreach workers, but, if they don’t take the city up on services, eventually authorities will remove the tent.
Bharel said that there was a sudden “influx” of people into the area in the couple of days before Wednesday’s actions. Bharel said that some of the people said the fact that the city would be
offering services brought them to the area from out of town. She said they were given shelter and then, for
people from elsewhere, workers looked to set them up back in their hometowns.
The officials said that a
crowd of about 40 people was back milling around the area on Thursday, as the problems of open-air drug dealing and use continued even without the tents. Asked about that, Wu talked about the efforts to create more housing and services in the city. She added, “Our focus is going to be on working with small businesses, neighbors, folks who live and work in the area to make sure that we can fix up the neighborhood as well.”
Wu and her team had to speak up over chants from protesters outside yelling “Shame on Wu” through a bullhorn as the anti-vaccinemandate opposition from some law enforcement groups continues to follow the mayor around the city in the days leading up to the start of the rule this weekend.
BPD Lt. Peter Messina confirmed that the city had found two dead bodies at Mass and Cass over the past week. Neither appears to be from physical trauma, though homicide detectives were called to one on Monday in Newmarket Square out of an abundance of caution, cops said. The cause and manner remain under investigation.