Janey administration defends role in controversial Methadone Mile hotel plans

Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration plans on kicking in some money toward the plan to house homeless in a Methadone Mile hotel and is defending the move as a way to “get people off the street.”

It comes as some residents and elected officials fear the hotel idea will simply worsen the situation at the corner of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue.

Boston Health Chief Marty Martinez told the Herald on Friday that the city will pony up a yet-to-be-determined amount of money to aid Victory Programs in leasing up to 35 rooms at the Best Western at 891 Massachusetts Ave., a building known as the Roundhouse. The rooms will house homeless and drug-addicted people who are living on the streets nearby.

Martinez said that Victory Programs is doing this initiative through a state grant, but is looking at a “funding gap” — so the city has agreed to kick in dough for what’s become a deeply controversial project.

“Our number one goal is get people off the street,” Martinez said. He said it’s not yet clear how much money the city plans to contribute, and insisted, “This is not a city property — this is not a city program.”

The building is right in the heart the troubled “Mass and Cass” area, which is essentially an open-air drug market and haven of crime that’s known as the city’s Methadone Mile.

The plan, about which the city and addiction-services provider Victory Programs have remained somewhat tight-lipped, has caused an outcry from residents, activists and local elected officials, who fear it will create a bad situation for the people placed near their dealers in the hotel — which locals worry the city will just end up just filling with hundreds of people like a big, poorly supervised shelter, further entrenching the problems in the area.

Martinez insisted “there’s no plan” for the other floors of the shuttered Roundhouse, and said that’s not going to happen.

“We understand the concerns that some folks have,” Martinez said. But he said, “This takes people who are living in tents and gets them stabilized.”

He said Victory Programs has a “list” of 20 or 30 people living on the street there who are “ready” to enter into this type of housing.

Victory Programs, which has a good reputation in the area, held a “stakeholders” virtual meeting on Friday evening, but told the Herald that the press would not be let into the Zoom call.

Steve Fox of the South End Forum community group said the closed-door process is “inadequate,” and is “a transparent attempt to control the narrative, and that’s a shame.”

He said he and others plan on putting together a public meeting next week, to which he’ll invite the city and VP. He said the goal is to find out more about “what Victory Programs is proposing and what the city isn’t telling us.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3ibeRH8