More than SEVEN HUNDRED of our most needy residents were put on the street Wednesday after government officials were no longer willing to ignore the safety issues of the ONLY bridge linking the city’s largest homeless shelter to the mainland. Of the 700 people displaced, about 400 are residents of the now-closed homeless shelter and 300 more used recovery programs hosted on the now-isolated island.
There are SO many questions to be asked about this absolutely necessary closure. Here are some of them (I saved the most important for last):
1. Would government officials block THREE HUNDRED wealthy residents of Manchester-by-the-sea or Marblehead from their homes instantaneously because of a failing bridge that had been flagged for YEARS? Of course not.
2. Would government officials allow a failing bridge to a wealthy community to literally fall apart like this? Of course not.
3. Would government officials put a government asset vital to a more prosperous group of people on an island isolated by a single aging two-lane bridge? Of course not.
4. Will government officials fast-track a replacement for this bridge (like the program for I93 between Boston and Woburn) or the vital resources now isolated on the island behind it? Or course not.
5. Will either campaign admit the urgency of our public infrastructure crisis, and commit to funding its solution? Of course not.
Here’s a suggestion:
State government officials should IMMEDIATELY seize the property and buildings of Suffolk Downs, and make a new homeless shelter and recovery programs IMMEDIATELY available at this new location. State officials can assure Mr. DeLeo that these temporary facilities will be relocated as soon as long-term alternatives are in place elsewhere.
Call me cynical, but I think that if Mr. DeLeo actually WANTS to find the money for programs like this, he will find a way to raise the necessary taxes in order to fund them.
We hear much talk about “passion”, “vision”, and even “morals” from our several gubernatorial candidates. I wonder if any of them will touch any of the questions raised by this timely crisis. Of course not.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this sort of thing drives me nuts. A DEMOCRATIC-majority state should have impeccable infrastructure. We’re supposed to be the ones who believe in government and make it work.
the quality of our infrastructure has improved in the eight years under Governor Patrick. Not enough for my tastes, and not always prioritized just how I’d like it, but it has gotten better.
It would be nice to “double down” and keep MA moving forward on this stuff, and having to close down Long Island is absolutely a failure.
‘Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.’
…why these services were in what seems like such a remote location in the first place?
There is simply no excuse for this. How can you not already have a plan in place to replace a bridge known to be in bad repair?
The Globe article says that “City officials said the bridge was last inspected sometime between 2010 and 2011. They said it is typically inspected every two years.” So why do City officials not know whether the bridge was inspected in 2010 or 2011? And why would they claim the bridge was inspected every two years, while at the same time stating that it was last inspected over three years ago?
Shame on both Mayors Walsh and Menino.
Walsh has promised to find places for everyone that was removed. I hope he doesn’t think that stuffing them into the existing shelters and drug rehab facilities is even remotely sufficient. And was it really necessary to remove residents without making sure they took their possessions and medications with them from their lockers?
One this is for sure: if Boston cannot be trusted to maintain the crucial infrastructure it already has, it definitely cannot be trusted to build new infrastructure to accommodate the Olympics.
as that seems to be the issue whenever a “why didn’t someone know?” question comes around.
Boston owns the island, but the bridge is Quincy’s jurisdiction. Boston has been trying to get the bridge repaired for years.
From the March 16, 2014 Patriot Ledger:
That article clearly states that the plan to fix the bridge was approved. So why hasn’t it been fixed?
And why did the City not know when the bridge was last inspected, or claim it was inspected every two years but not since over three years ago?
Why is the Mayor talking like we have to start from scratch to plan and build a new bridge?
Sorry but this is still a huge black eye for the Mayor’s office.
Neither Menino nor Walsh had (or has) the juice in the Ledge to beat Quincy on funding for the bridge. This is all Committee inside ball, and none of the Boston reps are in a position to go toe-to-toe on this.
The reason it wasn’t fixed was that Quincy pols don’t want it fixed. The stop gap funding is because there is also a day summer camp on the island (as well as the the Boston Police firing range, a few witness protection safe houses, and other odds and ends…).
Why is Marty Walsh talking about starting from scratch?
Because construction contracts and jobs might, just might, trump Quincy NIMBY Triumphalism.
Can anyone say Jay Cashman?
So the truce was called off?
In any case, how does this absolve the City of Boston from knowing what the state of the bridge was? How could they get caught with their pants down like this? Where is their back-up plan for all of the services that were housed on the island? If they knew they couldn’t fix the bridge then surely they must have known something like this was going to happen? Right?
And does anyone really believe that Boston has absolutely no leverage over Quincy?
> And does anyone really believe that Boston has absolutely no leverage over Quincy?
One should never underestimate the stubbornness of local officials. A chance to stand up to Boston probably just makes them dig in.
But in general I agree with both you and Paul. There’s more fault than just Boston, but Boston certainly has some things to answer for.
We’re too busy building “Job Creating Casinos”. This is an embarrassment and a disappointment.
We are going to spend 1B on a convention center that we don’t need – and will hurt the seaport district.
One No Politician has done a great job addressing in multiple posts over the last year, why does MA have such an abysmal record on homelessness? Why do we keep shipping them off to remote areas inaccessible to public transit in Western MA or closer to home here? We absolutely need a plan in place to equitably treat this population-many of whom have served this country in uniform or are mentally ill. It’s just not fair.
I just attended a wedding of a friend in Pittsburgh, the groom, who is now an Emmy award winning hip hop producer, was one of the most happy and humble people I ever met. I was surprised, seeing all his success, to learn that he had been a homeless single dad not long ago. If it were not for a Pittsburgh based program that enabled him to get back into school and acquire the business skills he needed to match his musical talents, he would not have the success he had today. He is now creating jobs, giving back to his community, and establishing awesome partnerships with local schools (where he met my friend who teaches there). This is a guy MA would confine to an island or to Springfield rather than help. That’s tremendously sad.
Kudos to BMGers No Politician, dave from hvad, and Anthony Guardia for their work in these fields and keeping these issues on our radar.
In addition to the infrastructure problem, there’s the problem of where the people who were once sheltered on the island are going to go. The homelessness crisis has filled the other available shelters and some homeless families are now staying in motel rooms.
From the campaign rhetoric, you might reasonably have gotten the impression that the state is taking care of the problem and that no homeless family is turned away from shelter. But you would be wrong.
More here.
Not on the part of individuals and families who are homeless, but rather on the part of society for tolerating it. I have this nagging suspicion that due to policy choices, homelessness in Western Europe is at a bare minimum.
No doubt, the state is going to take these 400 individuals and stuff them into the “poor section” of the state – hotels in Western Massachusetts. Like it has done time and time again. Out of sight (of Beacon Hill), out of mind.
can we also take a minute to say that there is something completely disturbing about this entire island and how its used — and I don’t just say that because it’s the inspiration of an incredibly creepy and disturbing movie and book.
People should be forced to interact with — and confront — our society’s less fortunate everyday. Shelters should exist *in* our communities. If people don’t like those shelters in their communities, they should do something to make sure people don’t need them.
Shuttling them off to a literally deserted island — complete with a gated bridge no ‘normal people’ could cross if they wanted — is wrong.
I don’t want to see hordes of homeless people carted off to an island where they’ll be seperated from society — I want to see the shelters right where people live. I think there should be shelters in the heart of the city, in the swankiest neighborhoods of West Roxbury and the Back Bay, in Brookline and Newton and next to mansions on the beach in my hometown of Swampscott. I want shelters on Marblehead Neck and Beverly Farms and in the heart of beautiful Manchester-by-the-Sea — at least until they get over themselves enough to get rid of that whole ‘by the Sea’ snootery.
I want shelters in the heart of Wellselley, Westwood, Wayland, Weston and all the other incredibly wealthy towns that begin with W, so they get a sesame street style lesson on why they should give a damn about other people in the world.
I want shelters in Nantucket and Martha’s Vinyard, right next to some really, really rich Wall St. tycoon’s house, who’s hedge fund company is part of why we have such a bad homeless problem to begin with.
Maybe then — if this upsets these people — they’ll actually do something about the *real* problem, ensuring we’re finding jobs for people, investing in our safety nets, mental health system and substance abuse programs, finding good foster families for homeless teens and investing in programs that put homeless people into their own homes, in communities where everyone lives.
I mean… freaking Utah is doing that. Why can’t we?
I’m totally on-board with you about this.
Hence my suggestion that we start by relocating them to the Suffolk Downs site. Perhaps we can then have a REAL conversation about our homeless population.
I would prefer a temporary location in any of the towns you mention, but our prosperous towns are much better at making sure that they have no similar locations available for use by the state.
I would like to see Long Island join the rest of the Harbor Islands as a getaway, camping, and recreational area.
It never made any sense to me it housed homeless shelters. You see the special buses running regularly busing people regularly back and forth between the city and the island. The location is certainly fairly remote if you don’t have a car. Access to, and I believe from, the island is entirely restricted by way of a guard station on the bridge.
I always thought that Boston should sell parcels on the island to developers (the views of the harbor are amazing, and if you have a car, the commute into the city is excellent), make a ton of money to put toward a good use, and relocate the shelters someplace far more centrally located for the benefit of the residents and those providing the services. I may be wrong on this but I also thought that the shelter itself was not well maintained, so if that is true, maybe it would be an upgrade all around.
There is a good sized organic farm on the island, now which I think should also be part of any new location if it were to be moved:
http://www.norwichbulletin.com/x769899323/Video-Homeless-serve-themselves-at-Boston-Harbor-farm#axzz1PrRIFDQb
And of course, this is NOT to say that shelter residents do not deserve good views. But where they have to be bused in and out and otherwise cannot leave the property, it does not seem to be optimal for many involved. And just because it’s been operating this way since 1928 doesn’t mean it should continue this way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_%28Massachusetts%29
Would it shock anyone if the shelters were poorly maintained?
There are no residents to walk or drive by and see a decapitated building, who could then complain to city officials or their local representation.
They couldn’t even keep the bridge operational — so who knows what the state of things is on the island?
Additionally, you are 100% correct that there is a guard standing watch to make sure no one comes on the island.
I just think this is really appalling – and completely agree with your prescription for what should happen. I’d just want to make sure any profits from the sale of any land on the island was specifically earmarked for expanding beds in shelters and opening new ones in good locations — including nice neighborhoods — across Greater Boston, and that an organization like the BRA wasn’t allowed to get its greasy hands on it to ensure a sweetheart deal.
Everyone deserves a good roof over their head. That is a fundamental societal right. Even Utah is getting that right.
We need to have beds for homeless people in good neighborhoods (including ones with good views!), with good access to services and transportation.
Good clarification.
If this land were to be sold, the money should go first and foremost — or perhaps even exclusively — to housing (not to mention social services programs) for people in need. I am reminded of this quote:
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
There was also always something really dehumanizing about the busing. Let’s ship these people off where no one can see them. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be on one of those buses.
Reminding the large nonprofit institutions to contribute toward municipal services and be available in emergency situations like this might be a good next step. These institutions are part of the Boston community, time they started acting like it. Mayor Walsh did post the updated PILOT contribution page when I brought it to his attention (Twitter, a wonderful social media tool.)
After this incident he needs to put pressure on these large nonprofit institutions, who own 50% of the land in Boston, to pony up their fair share and housing the 3,714 Boston homeless is a municipal service. 50% of the 25% contribution the city asks for can be a community service credit, bringing an institution’s contribution down to 12.5%.
I’ll bet there are some empty office buildings, and floors, owned by these institutions that can temporarily house people in emergency situations like this. Just a reminder, Malcolm A. Rogers, MFA Director, was paid $827.930.00! He received a “housing allowance” of $62,500.00! Boston’s PILOT program asked the MFA for $904,921 toward municipal services, chump change to the MFA, yet they only paid $57,601! Leaving Boston taxpayers, 21.6% who are Boston’s working poor living from check to check, to pick up MFA’s share.
I was particularly disturbed to find that people were not allowed to take all their possessions. If you have nothing, the few things you do have mean a lot. Why are some of these evacuated people left to sleep on shelter floors? Doesn’t the Red Cross have emergency cots? Is the Red Cross giving these people a voucher for clothing and personal items? That is done for fire victims, I don’t see where this is different. Will these people be allowed to go back by ferry to retrieve what little they have?
You mean like when they feed the hungry, educate the masses, or cure the afflicted? Boston, Boston-metro, and indeed the entire Commonwealth is richer because of our non-profits — organizations that are very much a part of the Boston community.
Now look, reasonable people can disagree about which non-profits should pay property taxes or PILOTS, and how much they should pay. But it seems to me that only an unreasonable person would suggest that the non-profits aren’t acting like they’re part of the community, when it is those very organizations that pick us up when we’re at our lowest. Non-profits embody the very definition of community.
any organization in which its CEO or executive director earns upwards of a million or more is either not truly a nonprofit or only nominally so.
All the major private colleges in and around Boston can certainly afford to pay the full property tax and should, but at the very least they should meet the city’s current PILOT requests. Ditto all the hospitals.
If the bulk of them continue to fail to do so, then the state should step in and make changes to how we define “non profit” to account for tuition costs, executive pay and endowments/money reserves.
Some other category of ‘non profit’ could be created for organizations with high executive pay, huge cash reserves and giant revenue streams, where they have to pay property taxes or some set percentage of it.
… but all the private colleges do pay full taxes on all commercial property owned AS WELL AS PILOT on all property defined as non-profit. MIT, for example, owns the Le Meridien hotel on which it pays full commercial taxes. Harvard and BU own lots of rental properties for which they pay the full and fair commercial rate. It is not true that as soon as a non-profit owns a piece of property they don’t pay full and fair commercial taxes on that property.
The City of Cambridge negotiated with both MIT and Harvard to reach a fair PILOT. As a component of the negotiations, MIT and Harvard are limited in the amount of land they can convert to academic use and therefore are limited in how much commercial taxes they can escape. MIT is the largest single taxpaying entity in Cambridge and Harvard employees the most people (for which they pay ordinary payroll taxes). I am less familiar with the City of Boston’s negotiations with Harvard, BU, Tufts and others, but I am given to understand it is not unlike the Cambridge set up.
And, as far as I know, failure to pay the PILOT would result in a breach of the entire deal, so I’m not aware of any private college not paying their full PILOT on time. Again, I can’t speak to the hospitals…
Are you living under a rock?
Northeastern, for one, has a history of screwing Boston on PILOT — sometimes giving micro-cents on the dollar compared to what BU gives. In 2011, BU gave over $2 million to the city in PILOT funds… while Northeastern gave $30k.
As for school-owned commercial property… nice strawman. That’s a small slice of the land Boston’s colleges own.
Do you have ANY idea how much bigger BU is in comparison to Northeastern? Why would you expect Northeastern to give anywhere near as much as BU gives? Or perhaps you think that the PILOT is a blanket, one-size-fits-all, scheme applied to anything listed as “non-profit’. It is not.
I don’t think you understand inequalities…. which understanding is sorta a prerequisite for having this argument in the first place… but the small amount of land commercially taxed can represent a large ‘slice’ of the taxes paid… invalidating the argument that they “don’t pay their fair share.”
You are ridiculous to try to defend that.
Northeastern has 20,000 students, who pay 45k a year and it has a very healthy 600+ million endowment.
And you defend 30k in PILOT?
What a joke.
PILOT is not based upon number of students or the size of the endowment. It is based solely upon property. I guess “PILOPT” falls less trippingly from the tongue. But that’s neither here nor there as Northeastern LEASES the majority of the property they use. Northeastern University owns very little land, much less than they use, and certainly much much less in comparison to BU which is one of the larger land owners (they may even lease to Northeastern…) in the City.
I defend what is. I do not defend what isn’t no matter how much I wish it to be…
I told you earlier, yet still you refuse to understand, that Northeastern and BU — in the matter of land holdings — are vastly different in scale. That is why they pay vastly different amounts in PILOT.
you are only digging yourself deeper.
The large nonprofit institutions I’m aware of have their own missions, which would be interrupted by this pitching in. We do have fairly extensive government infrastructure … there’s that.
The “50% of land owned by nonprofits” has been bandied about for years, but given the expansion of every college from Berklee and BC to Emerson, Harvard, Northeastern and Wentworth I’m sure it’s low.
Northeastern’s zero — $0.00 — contribution to the city is particularly shameful given the properties it owns but of course, its VP for City and Community Affairs, John Tobin, was a Boston City Councilor. That’s Boston’s version of the K street revolving door. It’s not alone in telling the good people of Boston to take a hike.
The fact that Walsh is so concerned about the lack of housing in Boston he is considering levying a one percent surcharge on taxpayers, when the problem is that universities feel no compunction about thousands of students that they do not house, is an outrage. Taxpayers already foot the bill for billion-dollar institutions, pay sky-high housing prices, endure constants delivery trucks and buses of students and football fans on our roadways, and a profound loss of green space in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood. Brighton is down to 20% owner-occupied because investors make so much money renting to students. BC plans to build two stadiums and a 500-car garage on the prior Archdiocese site, which will choke the life out of a residential neighborhood.
Will Marty Walsh stand up for the people of Boston, or will he be romanced by the power and prestige of the wealthy, e.g. bought and used by their power and prestige so the the Olympics become an elixer he just can’t decline.
Brookline has a substantial number of shelters of varying kinds, and cheek-to-jowl against $2M+ townhomes. Check the holdings of the Pine Street Inn, for example. Check out the work of the BCMHC. Then check out that the Brookline Housing Authority owns 100s of affordable housing units 3 blocks from John Silber’s old BU digs, a multi-million dollar mansion.
While IMO Brookline doesn’t have enough affordable housing (including shelters) in South Brookline, I reject your implication that Brookline doesn’t have shelters, even in the swankiest neighborhoods.
Here’s a link to a chart listing cities and towns, the number of affordable housing units and the percentage of housing stock they represent. (Affordable housing is defined in chapter 40B of the General Laws, I think; haven’t checked to see exxactly what it is.)
This doesn’t go to the shelter issue precisely, but is a useful proxy. It supports nopolitician’s thought about Western Mass. doing more than its share and reypower’s about towns that start with “W.”
http://www.mass.gov/hed/docs/dhcd/hd/shi/shiinventory.pdf
We have had 52 units of subsidized housing for 40 years; this is primarily old-age housing. One bedroom apartments. It took 25 years for state to get around to building 12 units of subsidized family housing, but we now have that. We also have supported living homes for various things, but these are generally under the radar.
40B’s goal is 10% affordable housing for every community. I’m not opposed to more in my town, though residents would need their own transportation to live comfortably in Granby.
A timely reminder of the state of our infrastructure. If we’re going to fix bridges like this … be they in Boston or North Adams … be they for the needy, the greedy, or for the rest of us … we need the money, and linking the gas tax to inflation is the easiest way to provide at least a minimal level of infrastructure funding. Please vote NO on ONE.
on housing ($12-15 million), but it would increase the rent voucher program by about 20%. The biggest reason for homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. Increasing the amount of money going to vouchers would be helpful and instrumental in getting the homeless out of hotels and motels and significantly cheaper.
In terms of equity, building more public housing in non-urban areas is important. That’s the fairness problem that No Politician has been consistently good at pointing out. The cities have a large stock of affordable housing. The suburbs don’t.
The homeless problem can be solved. But it takes money.
…the Bureau of Substance Abuse. So what is a better use of tax dollars…a new bridge, or plowing another $80 million in to substance abuse / mental health treatment?
1. You’re comparing operating budget with capital budget.
2. You’re ignoring that Long Island is used for multiple social welfare goals.
3. You’re ignoring that replacing the facilities means finding an awful lot of land in Boston, not so easy to do.
The Globe piece linked in the thread-starter says that 300 homeless residents have been displaced. It sounds like the goal is to find 300 new beds. I note that the Pine Street Inn already has similar capacity (they promise an expansion in 2015). The existence of Pine Street Inn suggests to me that it is possible to site a new facility (or several smaller ones) in a more accessible location.
Perhaps a tighter rein on the BRA might produce both funds and real estate. Some additional arm-twisting of the developers investing enormous funds in luxury housing in the city might also prove fruitful.
It makes no sense at all (at least to me) to invest $80M+ in rebuilding a bridge to a locked and gated ghetto. Surely it would be more affordable, and produce a better outcome, to repurpose Long Island as a recreational destination served by water and relocate these vital services to more accessible locations.
While I don’t doubt that the politics are and will continue to be bystantine, it seems to me that ALL of the stakeholders will benefit from investing city and state money in the radical new direction we are discussing here.