Sue Sullivan speaks as residents wearing "Build the Bridge" shirts listen.
It was bad enough when the Long Island Bridge shut and even more drug addicts began congregating in the area of Mass and Cass, Sue Sullivan said. But now, the area has become a haven for drug sellers and people quick to settle a beef with a knife or gun, the head of the Newmarket Business Association says.
Sullivan, local business owners and nearby residents from Roxbury and the South End gathered for a press conference today on Southampton Street, across from the city shelter and Atkinson Street, which have become a vortex for violence, they said. So far this year, Sullivan said, there have been two murders - one outside the shelter, one at Mass and Cass - along with ten stabbings and one shooting.
Sullivan and residents said the neighborhood, where Roxbury, Dorchester and the South End meet just north of the South Bay Mall, is becoming near unlivable - City Council candidate Domingos Darosa said residents now try to drive elsewhere to shop, rather than go to South Bay and residents have to keep close watch on where their children play to make sure they don't get stuck with a discarded needle.
Brian Maloney, owner of Middlesex Truck & Coach, a truck-repair garage on Gerard Street, said he's having growing trouble attracting help because nobody wants to work in the area.
The business owners and residents called on the city to provide short-term answers to drive down the violence and longer-term solutions that would include getting even more housing and help for the addicts. They called on Gov. Baker to get involved as well, in part by using part of the Shattuck Hospital campus in Jamaica Plain for new facilities.
And they said it's time for the city of Quincy to stop trying to halt reconstruction of the bridge to Long Island, so the city can re-open that facility - one that would be available to people who need help from across the Boston area, including Quincy.
Darosa posted video of the press conference.
As the press conference was winding down, police headed onto Southampton Street, where somebody who was very unsteady on his feet wandered from around the corner on Atkinson Street:
They guided him back to the sidewalk, where two EMTs soon arrived to try to help him.
>The view down Atkinson Street:
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Comments
Marty is gone.
By Lmo
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 6:37pm
Marty is gone.
But his "Mile" will never be
By g
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 6:50pm
But his "Mile" will never be forgotten.
It was there before him, it
By Lmo
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 7:10pm
It was there before him, it just got worse.
As of December, Quincy was
By DrewD
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 6:52pm
As of December, Quincy was still denying permits on environmental grounds.
Methadone Mile is not Quincy's fault, but they are doing everything they can to help make it worse.
Agree to limit development to
By g
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 7:15pm
Agree to limit development to treatment facilities and have the rest of the island as parkland and the bridge will be built, . . . . . .'bout 7 years ago.
You have a point about traffic
By tachometer
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 7:22pm
I really hate all the traffic that clogs up RESIDENTIAL streets of Dorchester coming from the south. I think we should tear it, the Granite Ave and Lower Mills bridges down so that all those people creating traffic on our surface roads have to drive across Quincy to Milton and get on the expressway. Of course that's only a stopgap measure, I don't like highway traffic either so I'm going to get that shut down next and you can take a ferry into Boston if you need to.
Careful what you wish for,. .
By g
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 7:45pm
Careful what you wish for,. . . . . . . . . you might get it.
You may not have noticed how empty most of the downtown and many neighborhoods have been lately.
There is a word that businesses use for all of those people.
Customers.
Without them, city services can't be paid for and your taxes will go through the roof.
How we can fix this
By dwhogan
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 8:38pm
These issues aren't going anywhere. I've worked in human services for 21 years, and as a public health social worker since 2012. I'm in recovery myself, spending the mid-00s in and out of treatment, living with my parents, and ultimately on the street. My last episode of treatment was from November 4, 2008-June 1st of 2009. I went through the detox, TSS, halflway house continuum, before finding a get well job, subletting a room in an apartment, and then ultimately going back to school. I couldn't have done any of that if I was ensnared in this quagmire of bureaucracy and a fundamental lack of people in recovery having a major voice as to how we approach supporting folks in recovering from addiction, mental health, and homelessness. I frankly don't understand how anyone is able to "get back on their feet" once ending up on Mass/Cass.
Rebuilding the bridge to long island has some benefits (to everyone except people who have moved to Quincy/Squantum, and who would have to deal with the return of drug dealing/crime/ODs that impacted Quincy up until 2014) - we remove a major concentration of active users, street pharmacy entrepreneurs, and potential victims of violence/robbery, as well as alleviating some of triggers to relapse that shelter-based individuals must deal with should they be working to maintain abstinence. It certainly benefits residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, and likely has a positive impact on connected communities that are dealing with the kinds of overflow that @cybah mentioned in a prior comment.
It is not nearly enough.
The currently identified locations:
Long Island
Shattuck
Both good options, to start certainly. They're both in desperate need of renovation, and would probably be deemed brownfield/superfund sites if they were demo'd. The amount of asbestos in the tunnels under Long Island and contained within vacant parts of the Shattuck would need to be dealt with. That said, they're publicly owned and have served these purposes before. Both have some degree of removal from immediate urban core and remove some of the burden on residential neighborhoods, without being too far away from transportation options.
In identifying other locations to offer services, a few ideas come to mind:
1) Vacant Hotels impacted by CoVID
2) Vacant properties - I'm certainly not an expert on buildings, but there may be possible options located within the city limits https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/embed/d...
3) Vacant properties - state owned - If I'm not mistaken, some currently unoccupied properties which formerly housed psychiatric hospitals/developmental schools/etc.
-Fernald State School - Waltham
-Medfield State Hospital
-Westborough State Hospital (This may be in development, it's been a bit since I've been out to it, and i know that many of the remaining structures were being demolished)
-Belchertown State School
-Grafton State Hospital (currently has job core in a couple of the buildings, remainder I believe are still disused)
-Taunton State Hospital (inactive parts) and/or Paul Dever State School grounds (also mostly demo'd, though unclear what the property was ultimately converted to if at all)
-North Truro Naval Air Station - Much of it is disused, some programming for cape cod center for the arts takes place out there, though lots of crumbling officers housing and other buildings formerly used by the military
-Southfield/Weymouth Air Station - large swaths of this property remain unusued (except when Markie Mark was shooting Patriots Day) - there is already an existing residential program run by Bay Cove called New Hope that houses 60 people in 1 of the former officers barracks
-Malden Hospital
-New England Regional Medical Center in Stoneham
Additionally, as the motion picture industry is adjusting to life following covid, potentially looking at unused movie theatres or shopping malls as we continue to see the inevitable death of the American retail experience.
Once you get out past 495, there are a whole mess of disused commercial lots with little interest in development.
-I believe you need long-term residential treatment programming, that is outside of the urban core, and that incorporates elements of traditional recovery/12-step programming, Maintenance therapies such as methadone/buprenorphine/naltrexone, vocational rehabilitation programming, and community focused initiatives aimed at creating local partnerships with municipalities where people who are in recovery can become contributing members of those towns.
This MUST be a Massachusetts issue, not a Boston issue. While the city has responsibility to address this issue, there are plenty of people down at Mass and Cass who have never called Boston their city of residence. People get shipped down there from all parts of the state, or end up there because of the lack of treatment programs elsewhere.
Further, there must be a review of how things like Section 35 can be used in the 21st century. As it currently stands, it's woefully challenging for treatment providers to utilize, and the option to use is tied to the courts/criminal justice system. It's an antiquated solution from a time long before fentanyl and, really, before homelessness. Up until the closure of the state hospitals, homelessness was negligible. By the 1980s, it started to attract attention due to the increasing numbers of unhoused individuals, particularly those with mental health and addictions issues. As those folks left the hospitals that were closed throughout the later part of the 20th century (by BOTH liberals and conservatives), the only system left to pick up the pieces was the prison system. This creates a cycle that becomes almost impossible to extract ones self from.
People need hope, and they need well funded programs. Residents and businesses deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods, to not have to clean up where the city/state have fallen short. That said, it's an incredibly complex issue, with a simple solution: pathways to recovery that people actually want to utilize, that give people a clear path out of the hopelessness. We aren't even close to offering that to nearly enough people.
TLDR: Utilize vacant property across the state, convert into modern residential treatment programming, teach people how to become members of the community again. Stop the cycle of trauma, and it's impact on our communities.
Mental health in this country is a huge issue currently
By hydeparkish
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 8:23pm
My brother has been in and out of psych wards for the last ten years ( not Drug or alcohol related) and he always ends up back in the hospital since there isn't a program for him to go to after he leaves the hospital. It's scary how overflowing our emergency rooms are right now with various mental health patients ( my brother is currently at Faulkner with 10-20 others in the ER that have been there for over a week). We should really consider a new " state hospital" system to house and treat patients with a strategy other than Pharmaceuticals. This is one of the largest and most negative impacts on our country :(
I'm in support of raising taxes to help pay for more public services as this issue will likely get worse before it gets better and cost lots of businesses to lose money.
A new bridge to an island facility is only addressing a small fraction of the issue that's multiplied exponentially due to Covid.
The Street Without Joy
By plt3012
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 8:31pm
I live near Andrew Square and I see the addicts everyday. I think the biggest (and legitimate) fear on Quincy's part is the potential for high end development on Long Island. The reality of it is that once a bridge is built and a treatment facility is up and running; how long would it be before developers come in and make a play for building some kind of luxury resort?
We all know it would just be a matter of time and then the reemergence of "The Methadone Mile" would make itself known. Probably back in the Newmarket/Mass & Cass area. The reality is a ferry would be alright for a crowd that wasn't battling drug abuse. I don't see that being a safe and viable option for people looking for treatment.
I don't know what the answer is or what the outcome will be. But I'll hazard a guess that in the end the moneyed interests will prevail.
Why don’t they put the bridge
By BannedFromTheRoxy
Mon, 04/12/2021 - 11:20pm
Why don’t they put the bridge on the ballot like they did with that encore monstrosity
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