Revere residents to rally against proposed center
The facility would host 24 beds and vocational training
A proposal to turn a dilapidated, vacant home into a homeless center in Revere is receiving backlash from neighbors who say they will hold a protest over it on Friday.
The center would house a “restorative, educational housing program” on the dead-end Arcadia Street in the Oak Island neighborhood, near Revere Beach, said Gerry D’Ambrosio, an attorney for the developers behind the proposal.
A goal of the proposed facility is to take some of the city’s homeless population off the streets and into an environment that would feature 24 beds, vocational training, psychiatric assistance and drug counseling, if needed, D’Ambrosio told the Herald on Wednesday.
A flier alerting Oak Island residents of the center caught them by surprise and has put the neighborhood “up in arms” since it learned about the proposal earlier this month, resident Stephen Fiore said.
Fiore is helping organize a protest that’s scheduled to be held Friday at 10 a.m. outside of European Auto Collision Works, a business owned by the proposed developers Rob and John Nakashian.
“This is being placed on a side street with single-family homes, small, little capes and cottages that have children and senior citizens all around it,” Fiore told the Herald. “The neighborhood is up in arms about it because they’re trying to do it in the dark of night without telling anybody about it.”
The proposal has flown relatively under the radar since the type of facility being called for is protected under the Dover Amendment, a state statute that exempts agricultural, religious, and educational uses from certain zoning restrictions.
That means neither the City Council nor the Zoning Board of Appeals has jurisdiction over the project, D’Ambrosio said. However, it will need to go through the city’s Conservation Commission so it can receive suggestions and any conservation issues that may come up on the site, he added.
D’Ambrosio reiterated that the 5,000-square-foot facility on a lot less than a third of an acre would not be a detox center. Those taken into the program would have already completed detox and be required to have a record free of violence, he said. Those who are Revere residents without a home will be given priority. The city has had 25 to 50 homeless individuals over the last year, D’Ambrosio said.
Boston-based Bay Cove Human Services would staff the center and there’d be security around the clock, D’Ambrosio said.
“These are difficult issues that we need to talk about,” he said. “What I dislike the most, though, is the misinformation, the peddling of fear. If people understood the program, understood what’s being proposed and really considered it, I think they’d be a lot more open to it.”
The City Council last week approved a measure unanimously for the city clerk to draft a letter in opposition of the facility. Councilors sided with residents that they too have not been involved enough with the process which could ultimately lead to the center being open to the public come the fall.