Mass and Cass

Residents, families and business owners expressed concerns during a Boston City Council meeting last week about what they say is an increase in drug activity in their neighborhoods.

A new city ordinance that would ban tents from the Mass and Cass area is one step further away after it was referred out to the Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations, frustrating some who want quicker action.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has announced a “major phase change” in the city’s strategy for the tent encampment of opioid users near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

Throughout August and September, the Boston Public Health Commission is holding hearings for residents to decide how to allocate settlement money from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

Calls to Boston’s 311 line to report discarded needles, open drug use, overdoses and encampments in Franklin Park skyrocketed last year after the city removed tents and improvised shelters from the Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard area and erected temporary housing structures on the Shattuck grounds.

In the fields of politics and public policy, Boston’s communities of color made historic gains in 2022, with former City Councilor Andrea Campbell’s elevation to attorney general, Michelle Wu’s first full year as mayor and, for the first few months, a majority of people of color on the City Council.

While the mayor has laid the groundwork toward rent control and some other big-ticket reform items she ran on — like fare-free transit, overhaul of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, and revamped police contracts to tamp down overtime — none of those changes have yet come to pass.

Two weeks ago, Mayor Michelle Wu made a public appeal to the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker asking for the state’s partnership in responding to the crisis of homelessness and addiction and seeking a commitment of 1,000 state-funded units of supportive housing outside Boston.

Mayor Wu now confronts a very serious dilemma. After the attack on Jean McGuire, it will be difficult to gain community support for the assignment of Mass and Cass residents to the Franklin Park area.

Mayor Michelle Wu says she’s asking the state to facilitate the construction of 1,000 units of housing outside of Boston for people experiencing homelessness and addiction.

Despite a pledge last year to spread throughout the city housing and addiction treatment services for the homeless population concentrated in the area around Mass and Cass, Mayor Michelle Wu is not opposing a proposed 400-unit housing shelter that would be built at the site of the Shattuck Hospital in Franklin Park.

There is inadequate housing available for those now living at Mass and Cass without creating a social problem in Roxbury and other Black communities. The solution lies in finding a way to utilize the City of Boston facilities at Long Island in Boston harbor.