Our letter/petition opposing Mayor Wu’s plan to open a new shelter and shift services (and more drug use) into the South End

Cosigned by over 200 South End residents as submitted to the Boston City Council on August 30th, 2023

August 24, 2023

Dear At-large Councilors Flaherty, Louijeune, Mejia and Murphy and District Councilors Flynn, Fernandes Anderson, and Baker:

 We write as South End residents and community leaders to express profound concern and opposition to certain emerging proposals from Mayor Wu’s administration seeking to address the encampment and violence crisis at Mass & Cass by in effect shifting the same inadequate and unsuccessful approaches and massive volumes of drug use that have broken Atkinson Street onto Albany Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the South End and adjoining Roxbury.

 We agree with Mayor Wu that Boston needs to remove and permanently bar encampments on Atkinson and anywhere else in the city and commend her for recognizing the need for a major course correction in Boston’s Mass & Cass strategy, one with far greater emphasis on everyone’s safety and public order. We support whatever tools are legally and practically required to achieve that shared goal. And we are strong public champions of credible plans to help people move off the street and away from addiction in a controlled environment that’s safe for themselves and the community, qualities we see in the Recover Boston at Widett Circle proposal.

 But transforming Mass & Cass into “Mass & Albany” is not the answer.

The City’s announced plans are to close down Atkinson Street and instead send encampment dwellers and addiction services seekers into the South End. A new “Safe Sleeping Space” shelter aimed at the population in tents is to be opened at BPHC’s Miranda Creamer Building (785 Albany Street, next to the BMC overhead bridge) and people who up to now got addiction-related services at the Engagement Center or Roundhouse will be directed to a new addiction services facility at Creamer and to expanded addiction services at the nearby AHOPE clean needle site (774 Albany Street). Essentially, the existing Roundhouse and Engagement Center— proven magnets for drug dealing/use and violence [1]—are being moved into the South End.

Meanwhile, with Atkinson Street closed, two hundred or more people will be in search of where to go next, a reality for which the City has no plan or answer at all. Inevitably, the drug scene will reconstitute itself, except now centered on Mass Ave and Albany, drawn by proximity and the relocated services. And, unlike Atkinson Street, a minor side street that is barricaded off, the City will have no way to even begin to contain the situation, which will spread out for blocks in every direction, into alleys, onto stoops, across the BMC campus, our parks, schools and small businesses, along with the side effects (dealers, property crime and destruction, disorder). Nor will the exploitation, violence and victimization of the vulnerable be any less than before.

 With this as context, we respectfully ask that the City Council not support any new shelter or services in the South End (meaning on Albany or above) or Roxbury, including those purported to be “temporary,” and not agree to any tent removal ordinance deal that is contingent on making the South End and Roxbury shoulder more of the Mass & Cass impact than we already do. In making this request, we note the Engagement Center, which the City spent millions of taxpayer dollars to build just a few years ago, is now empty and available for the very uses the Wu Administration insists must be in the South End. Nor do we believe the contention there is nowhere else in Boston’s 48 square miles where a shelter or services can possibly be located. If Mass & Cass is truly a crisis—and it is—then it is time for others to step up and be part of the solution, as for years we already have.

Sincerely,

Steve Fox, Chair, South End Forum                                            David Stone, East Brookline Street

Cosigned by 200+ South End residents

[1] Newmarket private security has responded to over 3,000 calls for illicit and illegal activity at the gas station and building contractor immediately next door to the Roundhouse, with pervasive dealing and drug use and even an attempted murder on Roundhouse grounds, while the Engagement Center has been closed repeatedly due to violence and dealing, in failed efforts to reset conditions there.