Michelle Wu on ‘top priority’ of Mass and Cass

Mayor-elect Michelle Wu said the dire situation at Mass and Cass was “top priority” for her incoming administration, and largely presented similar ideas to the current just-started city response.

Wu said after an hour-long briefing on the area with members of Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration.

“This is top priority,” the newly minted mayor-elect continued. Of the briefing, she said, “It was great to really get into the weeds of what is happening on the ground now, what the plans have been, where we are headed and how the first couple of days of this current situation are going.”

That “current situation” is the implementation of Janey’s executive order, a multi-part policy change that went into effect two weeks ago and really began in earnest to start this week in an effort to begin to ameliorate the conditions at “Methadone Mile” or “Mass and Cass” that have worsened over the past half-year.

Janey’s move involves getting people out of the large and dirty tent encampment in the area and moving them toward treatment or shelter beds, first offering free services but then eventually removing the tents and enforcing criminal penalties if people reject them and refuse to leave after a couple of days.

Wu never directly responded to questions about whether there’s anything she’s specifically aiming to change in the broad sense of Janey’s executive order, saying “we’re just three days into a new framework” and that she’d follow the numbers and input. She stressed the need to add more available housing for the homeless.

“We are short of low-threshold housing, and we need to move quickly to retrofit that housing, to work with state providers, to work regionally, and identify that housing so that there’s the appropriate, dignified response,” she said.

The Janey plan has taken some flak from activists on the far left, who say people should be allowed to remain unbothered in the tents as long as they want.

Wu sounded closer to Janey, saying “tents are not safe or healthy for anyone” when asked about the encampment policy.

“Especially as winter grows colder, this will be a life-or-death situation,” Wu continued. “We also have seen very concerning sanitary issues there because it’s difficult to maintain any sense of public health.”

She said she hasn’t discussed names yet for her cabinet-level Mass and Cass czar, but has said that will be one of her first appointments.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2ZShI1d