UPDATED – see below
Did it seem strange to you that a bridge that obviously had been deteriorating for years had to be shut down with no warning, such that residents on the island had to be rushed off so fast that they weren’t even given time to collect their belongings? After all, bridges don’t become unsafe overnight. And, since the closure was a long time coming, how strange that the bridge was closed with no evident plan in place for what to do once that happened. And how awful that, since there was no plan, the people who relied on the services available on Long Island have been left basically stranded, “as hundreds of men and women have been sleeping on cots and floor mats in improvised shelters since the island was abruptly evacuated Oct. 8.”
Yesterday’s Globe had a long, must-read story on why things went as badly as they did with the bridge. It’s more or less what you’d expect: a bad combination of temporary fixes, poor planning, poor communication, and near panic when the decision to close the bridge was actually made, all combined with everything coming to a head under a new Mayor whose team wasn’t fully on top of things yet.
And yet, it seems impossible not to chalk this up as a failure in the early going of Marty Walsh’s term as Mayor of Boston. It’s not like the closure happened a week after he took office. It happened in October, ten months in. Even though the problem had been brewing for years, that should have been enough time to take stock of an obviously problematic situation before it became a crisis. And the problem has been magnified by the administration’s decision to abandon its initial plan to build a shelter on city-owned land on Frontage Road due to local opposition, as well as “concerns that a shelter on Frontage Road would interfere with a proposal by the family of Robert Kraft to build a soccer stadium.” Instead, the city will move forward with … a plan that has not yet been disclosed. Advocates are understandably upset.
“I’m appalled and disappointed that it has already taken this long,” said Michael Kane, executive director of the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants and a member of the Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee. “The governor and mayor should be treating this as the emergency that it has been since day one.”
Karen LaFrazia, executive director of the St. Francis House, where 25 women from Long Island are sleeping on cots in their atrium and dining room, said she hopes the new location means the homeless will live in better conditions soon.
She noted the city will soon be struggling to cope with its annual winter surge, when more beds are needed.
“I’m very concerned,” she said. “I don’t see a plan to deal with this.”
Today’s Download from MassINC (email, no link) has the following accurate, if brutal, summary of the situation by Michael Jonas:
It was bad enough that the city’s homeless shelter on Long Island was shuttered on several hours notice, with 450 beds suddenly yanked from the city inventory of places for those with no place to call home.
The task of replacing those beds with either temporary or permanent shelter housing elsewhere is exposing an inconvenient truth, one all the more glaring at this season of giving and help for those less fortunate: No one wants these people….
Talk of relocating 200 shelter beds to the former Radius Hospital in Roxbury was scrapped in the face of neighborhood opposition. Then the city said it was also abandoning talk of building temporary shelter space on city-owned land on Frontage Road in the South End. One South End neighborhood leader told the Globe the neighborhood is becoming a “dumping ground for Boston’s homeless.”
Roxbury residents, too, said they weren’t interested in being the solution to the shelter problem. Even the neighborhood’s uber liberal state senator, Sonia Chang-Diaz, got in on the action, saying the proposed site was “too close to schools and playground.”
It’s hard to blame Roxbury residents, who rightly recognize that such a facility is not going to land anytime soon in Beacon Hill or the Back Bay, or in leafy West Roxbury or the high-end side of Jamaica Plain. But it also begins to make the city’s homeless population seem less like fellow humans who have fallen on hard times and more like the barge loaded with 3,000 tons of garbage that famously spent five months at sea in 1987 after being turned away by six states and three countries.
The Walsh administration now says it has a new site in mind, which it will announce later this week. City officials are keeping the location under wraps for now, though.
It’s hard to blame them.
I don’t know what the best solution is. I do know that something has to be done … and soon, because it is getting very cold. And I agree with Michael Kane, quoted above, who said that “the governor and mayor should be treating this as the emergency that it has been since day one.”
UPDATE: The city has announced the proposed location for the new shelter:
The city in the next few weeks will begin building a new shelter in Boston’s Newmarket area for the hundreds of homeless displaced from Long Island, Mayor Martin J. Walsh told reporters on Monday.
The squat, brick building at 112 Southhampton St. will require significant upgrades, as it currently lacks showers and may require a host of other renovations to prepare it for more than 450 people who relied on the refuge on Boston Harbor. The Long Island Shelter was closed in October after the city abruptly condemned the bridge that connects it with the mainland.
Walsh told reporters in his City Hall office that he expects about 100 homeless people to be able to move into the space in mid-January.
“This is going to be fast-tracked,” he said….
He said the city is consulting neighbors but he does not expect that there will be a significant backlash, given that the building is located in an industrial area with no residential buildings.
We’ll see. At least things are moving forward.
Maybe that will get him and others to do something about our crumbling infrastructure.
One was on a story about how the city’s collective real estate was now worth over $100 billion, more than ever before.
The other was how the city has 17,000 people who needed emergency shelter last year, the highest of 25 big cities across America.
To show just how screwed up things are in the Hub, over 25% of Boston’s homeless have jobs — compared to Trenton, NJ, where only 4% of the homeless had jobs.
Literally thousands of people in Boston have been homeless in the past year, even while they hold down jobs.
Boston is both richer and poorer than ever before — and when NIMBY concerns win out over homeless people in December, it’s clear the rich in this city have never cared less about the poor than they do today.
or two Americas and it’s not getting better. For an in depth analysis of rising wealth inequality and the problems that result, I urge people to read “The Spirit Level” by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating electing candidates on a platform of “Jobs and the Economy” is never going to get us out of this. I’d argue that it makes it worse. As you point out, 25% of our homeless are laborers. They have “jobs” and the economy is growing.
Funny how none of the nominees talked about our income and wealth concentration during the election campaign that just finished.
Our Democratic party was deafeningly silent about wealth and income concentration during the campaign. Our overwhelmingly Democratic legislature has done all in its power to perpetuate the problem. Our out-going Governor attempted to make a baby-step in the right direction, and our Democratic legislature cut him off at the knees. We Democrats could turn this around in a heartbeat if we chose to drive our party in this direction.
In my view, it’s time for more action and a LOT less hand-wringing.
I read the Globe article on just what happened with the bridge closing — and it struck me that the city has spent $13 million over the past 10 years on upkeep in the bridge.
That’s a lot of money — and it’s clear it wasn’t nearly enough.
How much money is that, though?
Over the same ten years, the city could have had $1,200 a month for 90 people to have permanent housing somewhere in the city, for every month of those ten years. That would have housed roughly a quarter of the people displaced on the island.
And that’s not counting any of the money used for upkeep on the island, regular maintenance and upkeep of the structures there, the cost of running the homeless programs, and so on and so forth.
I would love to see if someone could add up all the money spent on the island for the homeless and on that bridge over its lifetime and see whether it could have been used to just give most or all of the homeless living there an actual home.
Then add to it all the people in prison today who may not have been if they had homes and a social worker to help them get back on their feet.
Utah’s homeless program has morphed from having a bunch of failing programs… to just giving people a home and a social worker. And you know what? While it’s well on its way to eradicating homelessness in Utah, it’s also saving money.
I think we’d find the same thing in Massachusetts. It’s well past time we just give people a home and a social worker and end the patchwork of failing programs and wasted tens of millions on this bridge.
It’s clear we have more than enough money in the system to house everyone. We’re just not spending it wisely — or compassionately — by just giving people homes and a little help to get back on their feet.
God forbid they have actual homes in actual neighborhoods and might have an actual life as citizens of our great Commonwealth. Not in my backyard they aint!
And yet there is affordable housing when you get beyond the the speculation fever zone.
There is a lot of cheap rental housing in low status but livable places like Fitchburg and Brockton where you still have public transportation access to Boston.
Has anyone thought of relocation assistance or is there likely to be nimby backlash there too? If I were in that fix I’d be psyched to get help getting out of Dodge.
If I didn’t live in Cambridge for free, I’d go to either one in a heartbeat before I’d contribute a dime to rentier greed hoards.
A housing-first program could work out, IMO.
I don’t support shuttling Boston’s homeless to other cities our towns en masse, either. It’s not as if Fitchburg and Brockton aren’t already confronting the issues of homelessness and hunger already.
Every community with good services and public transit should assist in the effort to end homelessness, but Boston has to take a leadership role in this effort, especially for its own residents.
I’m thinking of individuals rather than a collective symbol. I have been homeless and my remedy was to migrate.
But I’m interested in many places and know how to look rents up. There are likely to be a certain number of people who are stranded who would benefit from relocation help. If you think of it for a second, you may agree that understanding ‘the homeless’ as some monolithic blob to be parked where the least noise ensues is kind of unevolved.
I also don’t consider these various abstractions that call themselves Boston or whatever to be that significant. I think of place in broader terms like ecosystem.
So if I can take advantage of status depreciation of the abstraction called Brockton cause it isn’t sexy for property speculation and be less exposed to cost gouging, I will and I’m still in the biome I like.
I noticed that commuter rail costs are really low down there if you get off at the Braintree or Quincy stations and finish the trip on the red line.
People are doing this to an impressive extent anyway. Some may not be aware of the options.
Apologies for the misunderstanding, and thanks for bringing bringing your experiences.