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The next morning (this
The next morning (this morning) going to work I got off the train at North Station (I ride Orange Line from Forest Hill to North Station every day so wish me well). Seems MM'ers are now sleeping all over the sidewalks at North Station area. Maybe they are already starting to leave the South End and come on over to the North Station. The littering is insane. I laughed to myself when I saw workers putting down new sidewalks along Valenti Way. Those new sidewalks will only be littered again, peed on, puked on, and defecated on soon again.
The next morning (this
The next morning (this morning) going to work I got off the train at North Station (I ride Orange Line from Forest Hill to North Station every day so wish me well). Seems MM'ers are now sleeping all over the sidewalks at North Station area. Maybe they are already starting to leave the South End and come on over to the North Station. The littering is insane. I laughed to myself when I saw workers putting down new sidewalks along Valenti Way. Those new sidewalks will only be littered again, peed on, puked on, and defecated on soon again.
Can it really be six years since the Long Island shutdown?
Six years and still no bridge in sight? I think of how many luxury buildings have gone from planning to groundbreaking to opening since 2014, and wonder why we can't get our act together over one damn bridge. What a disgusting civic failure.
Blame Quincy.
Honestly I'm not sure why the city of Boston isn't just busing the junkies to Quincy and dropping them off in front of hospitals/treatment centers/city hall to let them deal with it until their mayor pulls his head from his ass and tries working with Walsh to get Long Island Bridge going again.
We should stop waiting for the bridge to be a solution
Quincy doesnt want it. And Boston has come up with every excuse in the book about water transportation to Long Island being inadequate. So there's every indication that it's not going to happen.
We should all take the bridge off our list of possible solutions and start finding real solutions. I thought Marty Walsh would bring his life experience to the table to help find real solutions, but sadly he has not. And Marty Martinez is more interested in promoting his social life in the Boston and New York press than addressing this public health nightmare. Both of these leaders need to step up or resign.
Civic failure in Quincy, yes
They're another parasite town like Brookline which exists so they can export their mentally ill and drug addicts onto our streets, drive into our city for excellent jobs and then cry about any attempts to solve regional problems with regional solutions.
Quincy has methadone clinics
Quincy has methadone clinics and detox centers and homeless shelter.
Quincy Has Junkies Too
Quincy had junkies a long time before Long Island shut down.
Quincy has a not so funny police department between dragging their feet on a murder to protect the sons of a former cop and now a member of the QPD is banned from a certain scratch ticket palace in Marshfield because he flashed his badge when the woman he was with didn't feel like wearing a mask in a restaurant: https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/video-shows-belligerent-coupl...
Three cheers to the Ming for making sure that these twits were called out.
We now what happened to all of the clowns when Ringling Brothers shut down. They went into politics in Quincy.
Quincy's foot dragging on the Long Island Bridge to stop the reinstitution of a bus run that had been in place since the 1940's because supposedly zombies were going to invade Squantum is Boston's runty little brother acting all big boy pants and stupid at the same time. Bleep Quincy.
Good point
Quincy is miles and miles ahead of Brookline in terms of helping to solve regional problems.
We literally have treatment
We literally have treatment centers sitting unused in a place where addicts won’t be preyed upon by drug dealers constantly. It’s literally on an island in the middle of the bay and the people of Quincy won’t allow us to fix the road to drive these people there because why? Because the wealthiest members of the community don’t want to look at a bus full of addicts?
It’s such a minor inconvenience, open the bridge already.
Long Island Bridge
The Long Island Bridge is nothing but a distraction to take the scrutiny away from the Walsh administration's ineptitude in handling Marty's Methadone Mile.
If Boston cared about building a Treatment/Homeless facility on Long Island it would agree to limit development to that and related medical facilities and forego the development of luxury condos, high end hotels and offices. Turn the remainder of the island into park land.
If Marty did that, two things could happen;
1, Quincy's legitimate concerns about a RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD being over run by traffic would be lessened and he likelihood of a bridge being built would increase.
but
2. Marty's real estate development supporters would lose out on a chance to make $MILLIONS.
It probably was not a confidence building move on the part of the COB to list Long Island as an "Economic Development Zone".
Marty has already messed up the South End and the Seaport. Who would trust him with Squantum?
Long Island Bridge
The Long Island Bridge is nothing but a distraction to take the scrutiny away from the Walsh administration's ineptitude in handling Marty's Methadone Mile.
If Boston cared about building a Treatment/Homeless facility on Long Island it would agree to limit development to that and related medical facilities and forego the development of luxury condos, high end hotels and offices. Turn the remainder of the island into park land.
If Marty did that, two things could happen;
1, Quincy's legitimate concerns about a RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD being over run by traffic would be lessened and he likelihood of a bridge being built would increase.
but
2. Marty's real estate development supporters would lose out on a chance to make $MILLIONS.
It probably was not a confidence building move on the part of the COB to list Long Island as an "Economic Development Zone".
Marty has already messed up the South End and the Seaport. Who would trust him with Squantum?
Long Island
The rich and shameless have fled to the isles of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard to escape the virus. The poor and powerless deserve their own island to escape from the virus.
Had to Laugh
When the MBTA Inspector complained that the state troopers won't get out of their air conditioned cruisers and do something to help the homeless.
Long Island is not a solution
Long Island is not a solution. Talk of Long Island is simply an attempt to exile the problem out of sight.
What IS a civic failure is not coming up with a plan for facilities & services where they are needed.
Exile
You're correct that Long Island won't fix everything for the addicts or homeless.
However, the other residents of the neighborhood should not have to join the suffering, dodge needles, human waste, or the other side effects. Re-opening facilities at Long Island, or Shattuck, or elsewhere will relieve some of the pressure on those people.
Note: I am not personally impacted, but speaking for some friends & acquaintances. I've walked and driven in the area and it's truly sad to see what's going on, for everyone's sake.
Long Island YES!
It's mostly just Squantum that was able to fight a new bridge, being made up of NIMBYs and Trumpers. LI Hospital was there long before they were. LI worked because it's a quiet campus, away from the stress of the city and with controlled access so that the drug dealing vultures that prey on those in recovery are kept out. I've met people who claim LI saved their lives for those very reasons.
And how
Are you blaming this on "Trumpers" ?
Long Island Bridge
Even if Quincy drops all opposition to the bridge, which it won't do, it will take 3-4 years to build a bridge to Long Island and to build and rehab facilities on the island.
There is not a functioning and inhabitable rehab facility on the island or a needed medical facility. Even with a bridge, it will take more than an hour to get an ambulance from the island, onto Quincy Shore Drive, over the Neponset river to Rt 93 and on to a hospital. That is when the roads aren't closed in the winter due to ice. Quincy no longer has an emergency room.
What is your solution in the 3 to 4 year interim for the problems of the homeless in the South End?
Or is everything ok other than the lack of a bridge to help Marty's real estate developer supporters?
Long Island has some attractions
It is owned by the city. It had a lot of infrastructure that was falling apart. Several non profits had programs that they could not afford to run anywhere else. If the city had been able to maintain the bridge and the buildings, it would have been a great resource for covid. It was originally an tuberculosis hospital, and was design to treat infectious diseases. The buildings are connected by underground tunnels (not important but weird).
There is definitely a stage of recovery that benefits from being separated from your life and society in general.
I assume that in most parts
I assume that in most parts of the country, addiction treatment facilities in large urban areas are not located on an isolated island. Did Boston have an unusually good program and recovery success rate compared to the rest of the country when Long Island was open? A lot of the discussion about reopening Long Island seems to focus on the presumption that an isolated island is the only location where you could really have successs, but what do other cities that don't have an isolated island available to make use of do?.
Well, for Covid
It might have been useful in the way the BCEC was pressed into service as a field hospital or as a quarantine facility for people with no or very mild symptoms. The distance from hospitals capable of caring for seriously ill or critical Covid patients would be a problem without the type of investment made in the Boston Hope facility.
And the standard of care from the days when Long Island was a tb hospital was a little different.
BCEC
I'd still like to know how much we're paying to the BCEC leeches to cover their lost convention business. Having it available as a field hospital was great for the month it was needed but of course the BCEC corrupted it into a handout for themselves. Imagine if we'd instead given that money to local restaurants instead? Real value.
I know, right?
God forbid that vulnerable addicts in recovery programs have some space for a little while between them and those trying to draw them back into addiction!
The civic purse is not unlimited and no neighborhood wants the facilities needed to treat this population.
The real problem is Quincy trying its damndest to block rebuilding the bridge.
It may not be THE solution,
It may not be THE solution, but it is a part of a solution.
Trust me I've been there. No
Trust me I've been there. No landlord wants to rent to a opioid addict who nods out on the bathroom toilet seat with a lit cigarette burning so the place can go up in flames while they are trying to chase their next high. At least with crack addicts they were awake.
Defund then refund the
Defund then refund the community!