Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has ordered police officers to dismantle a homeless tent city known as ‘Methadone Mile’ from Wednesday.
Plans were announced in August to clear the sprawling encampments in the Mass and Cass area where violence has been escalating and drug use is rampant.
The area has been occupied for years by tents and tarp covers which are lived in by people struggling with substance addiction.
Residents have already been notified of the start of the process to dissolve the encampment at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard from November 1.
Boston city workers began the first of three days of cleaning on Monday to remove more than 75 tents near the troubled intersection. A new short-term shelter will be built to house up to 30 homeless people which has raised alarm bells among locals.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has ordered police officers to dismantle a homeless tent city known as ‘Methadone Mile’ from Wednesday
Residents have been notified of the start of the process to dissolve the encampment at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard from November 1
The area has been occupied for years by tents and tarp covers which are lived in by people struggling with substance addiction. Pictured: Boston Public Health workers in Methadone Mile area on October 25
The mission to clear up the encampments involved placing people’s personal items into storage and moving around 90 people into shelters.
Any people attempting to join ‘Methadone Mile’ will be told by social workers and law enforcement that no new tents are allowed.
‘There is no magic wand in a very complex, long-standing challenge that cities around the country are facing with the opiate crisis, homelessness, mental health,’ Mayor Wu told WCVB.
‘But we know that in Boston we have a very good sense of, not only who it is that needs services, but also how to most effectively connect people with those services.’
Homeless people in the sprawling encampments were concerned by the request for them to leave the area.
Danielle, who is 39 and has lived in a tent in the area for six months, claimed she went to a nearby McDonald’s for a few minutes and came back to see her belongings had gone.
She was confused because she was told the deadline to clear her things was on Wednesday.
‘I’m literally left with the clothes on my back,’ she told GBH News. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
She cried as city workers told her that her tent was likely seen as abandoned before it was removed.
Danielle, who declined to give her last name, was referred to nearby shelters where up to 100 beds have been reserved for those being moved out of the Mass and Cass area.
But she does not see it being a long-term solution and added: ‘Nobody cares where we go. They’re just throwing us out, that’s it.’
Plans were announced in August to clear the sprawling encampments in the Mass and Cass area where violence has been escalating and drug use is rampant
The mission to clear up the encampments involved placing people’s personal items into storage and moving around 90 people into shelters
Any people attempting to join ‘Methadone Mile’ will be told by social workers and law enforcement that no new tents are allowed
The crisis which Mayor Wu inherited is said to have carried on despite efforts to connect 80 to 90 sleeping in the tents to social services on most days.
Although this number was reportedly decreased from around 200 daily.
Wu’s plan begins with giving police powers to remove tents and tarps before connecting the homeless users with housing and other vital services.
Those who were living in the Mass and Cass area will be offered transport to temporary housing facilities, according to the Boston Herald.
While the third part of the plan is to have a ‘heavy’ police presence in the area in order to crack down on crime.
City Council President Ed Flynn said he has spoken with Mayor Wu about his desire to see a ‘zero tolerance’ approach at the encampment.
‘We have rules in place, and people need to follow the rules,’ he said. ‘If they break criminal laws, they need to be arrested and prosecuted.’
Police Commissioner Michael Cox said: ‘We want to make it clear to the people who come to the city with a different intent, whether it’s to sell drugs or criminality, or to victimize the people that are in these areas, we’re not going to allow that.’
City officials have said the increased enforcement of the encampments will happen throughout November.
Boston’s coordinated response director Tania Del Rio last week said: ‘During this process, our commitment to the health, safety and dignity of every resident of Boston will remain steadfast.’
Plans were announced in August for a new short-term shelter to be built which would house up to 30 homeless people.
Residents said they are afraid it will push drug dealing and substance abuse into their neighborhoods but a city official said drugs will not be allowed in the structure and security will be in place around 24 hours a day.
Hundreds of people are usually seen around the encampments at a time but only 30 people are said to be staying there overnight.
They will be offered shelter at an indoor space on Massachusetts Avenue near a Boston Medical Center building. Clinical services will be provided to men, women and couples.
Hundreds of people are usually seen around the encampments at a time but only 30 people are said to be staying there overnight
There was an average of seven assaults per week in the neighborhood in which is more than double the average in the rest of the city
The city’s commissioner of public health Dr. Bisola Ojikutu previously said: ‘Over the past few weeks, the situation on the ground at Mass and Cass has made it impossible for the [Boston Public Health Commission’ and our partners to adequately provide critical services to those in need.
‘Things need to change, and this ordinance is a necessary step to get the situation under control.’
She said those being moved to the temporary shelter are ‘chronically unhoused individuals who have nowhere to go’.
Residents were told about the plans, where the goal is to clean up Atkinson Street by November, during a virtual community meeting.
Ojikutu said the solution was a temporary measure to ‘bring some order’ back and reassured locals that ‘this is not a long-term plan at all’.
But residents in South End were left unimpressed and believe an unnecessary burden has been placed on their neighborhood.
Ojikutu insisted that drugs will not be allowed inside the shelter and there would be security present around the clock.
She said the space would have a metal detector and people staying would have to register with officials with no congregation allowed outside.
Homelessness has long been an issue in the neighborhood. In January 2022, after notifying people living in the area, city public works employees driving bulldozers loaded tents, tarps and other detritus, including milk crates, wooden pallets and coolers, into trash trucks to be hauled away.
Since then, more than 500 people who were living at the encampment have gone through the city’s six low-threshold housing sites, and 149 have moved into permanent housing, city officials said.
Violence in the Mass. and Cass area has reached ‘new level of public safety alarm,’, Mayor Wu said.
There was an average of seven assaults per week in the neighborhood in which is more than double the average in the rest of the city.