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Boston has an opioid and homelessness crisis — one it has not nearly faced up to — and its broken heart is here.
By Danny McDonald and Craig F. Walker Globe Staff, Updated October 9, 2021, 7:18 p.m.
At Mass. and Cass, the area near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, a sprawling tent city has sprung up, home now to scores of people. It isn’t a huge encampment by the standards of other cities with similar troubles, but for Boston it is unprecedented and blatant, an emblem of civic failure. Desperation, squalor, and need fill the streets by day, with needles being stuck into veins almost everywhere you look. Danger rules the night.
Despair is a 24/7 business in this part of town.
Every now and then, a person exits a tent with a bucket of human waste and dumps it onto the side of the street. Anecdotes of street violence and prostitution are commonplace. Theft is seemingly a way of life. People don’t have to search very long for hard drugs; in this marketplace of dependencies, drugs find them.
“People are yelling out the drugs that they have so you know what to buy,” says one man who lives in a tent and is addicted to fentanyl.
A brooding sadness pervades the atmosphere; also, an undercurrent of rage. The ill will of the people here has many targets: parents, drug dealers, neighbors, police, former bosses, former landlords, politicians, outreach and case workers, homeless shelters, the media, themselves. Their lives have derailed in a very big way, and they mourn that. But society has failed them, too, and they are angry.
On some matters, there is consensus. Those who have been around the place for years say this is the most populated they’ve seen “the Ave,” as the area is often called by those who live there. They point to the 2014 closure of the Long Island Bridge, a span that long connected the mainland to homeless and addiction programming on the island, as the main reason so many live on these streets.
For years, the city has tried to fight the array of complex problems in the area, which is near where Roxbury, the South End, and Dorchester meet, and has become home to a cluster of social services. But conversations with more than two dozen people who live on these streets made this much clear: The crisis here only worsened during the pandemic. There are more people, bringing all their troubles with them — and, in some cases, their criminal ways and depravity.
There is a galaxy of stories to take in. Some seem too devastating to be true, but plainly are. But some come with narrators who are plainly unreliable — or evasive. One guy claims he is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm but then gives his age as 31, which means he would have been a newborn at the time of that conflict. A woman says her husband is Russian, only to say minutes later he is Nigerian. Prison sentences, stays at halfway houses, stints of sobriety, and court dates are often jumbled. Mental health issues abound. Many, in interviews, decline to give their full names or offer a street sobriquet, for reasons that are probably obvious. Others offer their names freely to a Globe reporter.
Some dream of a different life, as an illustrator, a bicycle rickshaw driver, a carpenter, a chef, an interior decorator. But for now, addiction controls them, and erases other ambitions.
What to do for the people of Mass. and Cass, and with this part of the city, has become a big issue in Boston politics, especially now, during election season. Rebuilding the Long Island Bridge is often discussed. The county sheriff has floated the idea of converting a detention center into temporary housing with treatment services. Others would rather spread recovery centers and shelters around the city and region, so they’re not concentrated in one place.
While the politicians debate, the daily rhythms of Mass. and Cass roll on.
“It’s complete misery,” says one man who is addicted to opioids. “Misery after misery.”
Tim tugs down his Celtics T-shirt to reveal a collarbone stuck out at an odd angle under his skin. He broke it in a fall, he says. He knows the scene here well.
“A lot of these guys are waiting to die,” he says.
He used to live on the streets; he says he’s now in transitional housing downtown. He says he’s back today for medical treatment, that he’s been sober since he was released from prison in 2016, after serving time for his fifth drunken driving offense. He says he attends a regular Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in South Boston.
He is, that is to say, making his bid for freedom, but remains current on the open-air drug market: When a passerby asks if anyone has any “johnnys,” which are pills typically prescribed for seizures and nerve pain, among other ailments, he gestures toward an intersection and tells the man to look for a “girl in light blue pants.”
A minute later, another passerby with another question: “Any poppers?” — slang for a certain type of drug that is inhaled. This Tim ignores.
A pair show up: Billy Powers and Chris. Chris says he is addicted to opioids. He does fentanyl, mainly. He’s been homeless for a decade, he says. He used to work in the trades, construction and painting.
But nowadays he panhandles. He typically stakes out a traffic island in the area and walks among the cars with a cup when vehicles are stopped at a red light. When he does get money, he spends it on drugs. But he says he hasn’t made anything in four or five days.
“It’s been dry, dude,” he says.
Powers produces a cross medallion he says he recently found on the street. He is asked if he plans on selling it. He shakes his head.
“Why?” he asks. “Are you interested in buying things?”
Full Article: Boston Globe
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