Fighting to offer help

At the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Boston sits another kind of intersection, a place where homelessness and mental illness meet.

In many cases, you can’t address one without the other.

While Mass. and Cass is a case study in the difficulties addressing homelessness, mental illness, and addiction, the similarly thorny question of what to do about homelessness bedevils cities that surround Boston

Take Revere, a city on the North Shore. A plan to build a 24-bed “restorative housing” treatment and educational facility there has suddenly become a lightning rod.

At a Revere City Council hearing last week, dozens of neighborhood residents voiced fierce opposition to the plan for the new facility, saying it was not appropriate on a residential street with many children. While councilors expressed opposition, too, they acknowledged they don’t have the authority to block the project.

Councilor John Powers said he supports increased services for the homeless but opposes the plan to house and provide services to 24 homeless individuals on Arcadia

Street in the Oak Island section of the city. Other councilors agreed that the facility doesn’t belong there.

City Council President Patrick Keefe said he didn’t believe the council could block the project, citing the so-called Dover Amendment that prevents communities from blocking religious and educational facilities, but joined other council members in unanimously voting to express opposition to it.

Some 40 residents showed up at the meeting to voice opposition. Several who spoke said they weren’t opposed to the idea of such a facility but said their one-way, residential street wasn’t suited for it.

Gerry D’Ambrosio, a Revere native and lawyer with a personal history of trying to improve mental health care and reduce the stigma surrounding it, represents the project’s developers and has the unenviable task of trying to convince fearful residents that this is exactly the kind of project cities should welcome to decrease homelessness in their own communities.

D’Ambrosio is trying to reassure city officials and residents that the project isn’t just about warehousing people, but about giving them the treatment and counseling that will get them off the streets for good.

D’Ambrosio said a Revere-based construction company will build the 5,000square-foot, two-story building on a 17,000square-foot lot. Bay Cove Human Services will manage its programs.

A flier circulated around the city encouraged people to attend a routine site plan meeting at City Hall on Tuesday. The flier included D’Ambrosio’s cellphone number and telephone numbers for a Bay Cove executive and the construction company.

The flier also suggested a detox center and methadone clinic could operate from the new facility.

Not true, D’Ambrosio says. He said that even before the flier went out, the distribution of his cellphone number on social media had led to threatening phone calls. He said too much of the opposition’s narrative is being dictated on social media, where misinformation and hateful rhetoric hold sway.

“First off, it’s not a temporary shelter or detox. It is not a methadone program. It’s educational, restorative housing for people from Revere,” he said. “It will provide mental health treatment, vocational support, and addiction counseling to people from Revere, to help people get and keep a job and get them back in the mainstream.”

D’Ambrosio said that, depending on the time of year, about 25 to 50 people are living on the streets of Revere. He said there is a colony of homeless people living on unused railroad tracks behind the proposed site.

“Our priority is to get Revere’s homeless off the street,” he said. “People complaining that they don’t want a facility in their backyard should realize homeless people are already in their backyards. This project is aimed at changing that.”

D’Ambrosio said cooler, more compassionate heads need to prevail.

“This is something that will be built by Revere people to help Revere people,” D’Ambrosio said. “We can’t just bury our heads in the sand.”

D’Ambrosio is scheduled to appear before the City Council Feb. 27. Stay tuned.