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Talking to the people drawn to Mass and Cass
By adamg on Fri, 09/24/2021 - 11:54am
WBZ Newsradio's Karyn Regal spent several hours at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard talking to some of the people who live there.
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Comments
Tourism
We know it’s tragic blah blah blah and people need help blah blah blah and no one chooses to end up there blah blah blah.
Cut the crap. Dig into who’s to blame and how we punish them, beginning with the street level dealers and distributors and ending with Big Pharma. Enough human-interest fluff.
I don't think it's that simple
Sure, there are drug users and more specifically drug addicts down there. Targeting drug suppliers is important and useful. However, there are a lot of drug users who are there due to terrible mental health issues - that's not a punishment issue. That's a human services issue which is what is more embarrassing as a thriving, rich metro area. Every town inside at least 128 if not 495 should be paying to get these people taken care of.
I think the services they
I think the services they need are located there. That plays a part
I've been thinking about this
I've been thinking about this one a lot, since there's a push to decentralize the services so one neighborhood/area isn't overwhelmed by this, and I'm consistently torn between "meet them where they are"—literally, the people who need help are at Mass and Cass, so bring the help there—and thinking about how it's unlikely they're all from the South End/Roxbury area, and had to travel there.
I think the best solution is to address the immediate need at Mass and Cass by bringing the help there, but to simultaneously figure out how to offer help in neighborhoods across the state (ideally, region, but not sure if we can get NH/VT/CT etc on board with this; but we all need to recognize that this is not a Boston problem, this is a Massachusetts problem at a minimum) so that people do not have to leave the areas they currently live in to get the help they need.
Meet them where they are is self-fulfilling
Provide distributed services, have distribute outcomes, at least a bit. I'm not going to pretend that a homeless person would be tolerated in Brookline or Newton - surely the cops pick them up and drive them over the city line, but if there was at least a few homeless shelters and drug treatment centers in those kinds of places, it would help. There should be a requirement that for every X many residents, a certain amount of public services like this need to be offered or Weston can agree to pay that amount to a regional support fund.
Cops aren't driving homeless guys anywhere.
But they did 25 years ago.
And doesn't Weston already pay a regional support fund to an extent? I imagine the State income tax for those residents cover quite a bit of services that Weston residents do not receive. I can only imagine what Brookline/Newton residents pay. I'm betting it's more than Weston?
And for what its worth Brookline and Newton (not Weston) aren't much different than several sections of Boston when it comes to "services". I mean are you going to break it down by where they grew up? The homeless choose to go where they want. I've never seen a Brookline or Newton cop drive a homeless guy into Boston in a long time (or heard of it)
Don’t forget the suburban and
Don’t forget the suburban and rural towns that refuse to help these people so now Bostonians have to clean up their mess.
The interviewer neglected to interview the violent ones
There have been several murders committed in the Mass & Cass "community". The interview gives the impression that this is all about down and out people in need of services, but the simple fact is that there a lot of pretty dangerous people there.
I suppose if I was doing the interview I might also steer clear of the murderers.
FWIW
The violent ones aren’t violent all the time.
Right?
How do we know that some of the "violent" ones weren't interviewed. Unless Rob wants an interview to be conducted with someone who is actively murdering another person...
The federal government level.
The federal government level. Feds need to start making the creaters of the drugs that caused all this mess across the entire country to make wonder drugs to stop drug adduction.
You mean like this?
https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement-6fd3e10dcd6b0...