Removal of tents, new transitional facility part of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s new plan for Mass & Cass

By Emily Maher, Jamy Pombo Sesselman, Phil Tenser

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    BOSTON (WCVB) — A proposed ordinance would give the Boston Police Department the authority to remove tents and tarps from the crime-ridden encampment that has become a permanent fixture in a troubled area of the city known as “Mass and Cass.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Friday she will be filing an ordinance with the Boston City Council that prohibits tents and tarps at the encampment around the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard. She described the ordinance as the first of three prongs in her latest plan to address the troubled neighborhood.

Other elements of the plan include moving services to a new location and enhancing efforts to patrol the area with both police and teams who can connect people to resources.

The ordinance, which still needs City Council approval, would give additional authority for police to enforce the removal of encampments and make arrests for anyone not in compliance.

“What we are talking about today in introducing an ordinance would be empowering the Boston Police to address the significant public safety challenges that are present by giving them the ability to enforce taking down temps and tarps,” Wu said.

It will only apply to individuals who have been offered adequate housing, shelter and transportation and who have been given the opportunity to store their personal belongings, Wu said.

Some of those living in the area — and the services that drew them there — will be offered temporary housing at 727 Massachusetts Avenue, where 30 transitional beds will be available.

During an interview for Sunday’s episode of WCVB’s On The Record, anchor Ed Harding asked whether 30 beds is really enough.

“On average, there’s 200-230 people there during the day. A very, very much smaller number of those folks actually are in need of housing,” Wu answered. “Most everyone else has housing already and there has been growing drug dealing and violent activity happening.”

“These transitional beds will supplement existing shelter beds that the mayor’s Office of Housing is identifying as part of this response,” said Michele Clark, Deputy Director of the Boston Public Health Commission. “Client stays are intended to be brief, and our goal is to get them into stable, long-term housing.”

That is in the same area where officials concentrated services in 2016, as a 5 Investigates report showed at the time.

The engagement center on Atkinson Street and the clinical services provided at the center will be relocated to the new space on Washington Street.

Wu said the new strategy is different than previous approaches made to address the crisis.

“For the very first time, there is an infrastructure built up of hundreds of low-threshold housing units that we continue to see the state expanding,” Wu said. “We have also seen the impact and the improvements from daily coordination of almost a dozen agencies.”

“Our goal is to allow those who need help to have the space top get it – at the same time keeping the residents and other workers in the area safe, as well as our workers themselves,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said.

Cox said mobile police units will be in locations across the city so those dispersing from Mass & Cass do not erect tents in other communities.

“We are going to be in every neighborhood with these mobile teams to make sure this does not occur,” Cox said.

During the interview for OTR, Harding also asked whether Wu is confident that the encampments won’t return this time. She said conditions on the street are different now than during her initial cleanup attempt when some people had been living in the encampments for years.

“In a situation this complex, with so many different layers, and so much that’s outside of the control of any one small city, there will be some steps forward, steps back and steps forward again,” she answered. “I am confident that we are overall moving forward in a really significant way.”

In recent months, Wu said, police officers and others have been attacked at the current area of the encampment. City data shows Boston EMS responses to the area have doubled from a year ago.

Teams are continuing the ongoing effort to connect people in the area with treatment services when appropriate.

The city plans to file the ordinance Monday before it is presented at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

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