Boston’s neighboring cities and towns should pay into a regional fund to help with costs of the homelessness and addiction crisis around the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, also known as “Mass and Cass,” says City Councilor John FitzGerald.
“I think it gets everyone that has skin in the game involved because it is a regional problem,” FitzGerald said in an interview.
The first-term city councilor who represents most of Dorchester and a portion of the South End said he is filing a hearing order this week to prompt the city to consider the idea of a Regional Substance Use Disorder and Mental Health Fund that would require Boston and it’s municipal neighbors “to contribute to a shared fund supporting addiction recovery, housing and public health infrastructure,” according to the proposed hearing order made public Monday.
FitzGerald is scheduled to formally introduce the order, which would explore fund structures, equitable contribution formulas, permissible uses of the fund and the legal pathways for setting it up, to the council Wednesday.
“What we’ve done has not worked, so there are going to be other sorts of methods we’d like to see,” he said, later adding that safe injection sites and finding a site for the community initiative Recover Boston should be part of the options municipalities consider funding. “Some funding would be necessary to do those things.”
FitzGerald echoed one of the often repeated insights from Boston Public Health Commission and Boston Medical Center data: that many within the throes of the crisis who receive treatment in Boston aren’t Boston residents. If realized, he said, the regional fund would shift Boston’s current, largely independent operations to a cost-sharing approach that would ensure the cities and towns across Greater Boston “that benefit from Boston’s services” are also contributing.
“It’s great [for] everyone [who] gets to say ‘dump it on Boston,’ and ‘it’s not our problem anymore,” but they’ve got to realize just like anything…you’ve got to make sure that you’re helping out.”
Boston mayoral candidate Josh Kraft, who has made addressing the issues at Mass and Cass part of his campaign platform, released a statement backing FitzGerald’s fund idea saying leadership that can address “the human tragedy and the public safety threat,” within the area, is past due.
“I support Councilor FitzGerald’s push to increase state funding and ask neighboring cities and towns to contribute as this is not just a Boston problem – it is a statewide problem,” Kraft’s statement said.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who made clearing the area around Mass and Cass a priority early in her first term, said in a statement it’s a “regional challenge concentrated in Boston” and that the city will continue to advocate for state partnership and resources.
“Over the last three and half years, the City has deployed all available resources for treatment and housing pathways, and we continue to address quality of life concerns in our neighborhoods,” a Wu spokesperson said in a statement. “The State’s investment of temporary resources in previous years was critical to the real progress in ending encampments in Boston, building clear pathways to recovery and stable housing, and coordinating public safety and public health responses. More is needed, and we continue to work alongside residents and advocates to urge partnership for a regional public health recovery campus and decentralized treatment sites that will meet the scale of the challenge.”
Mayoral candidate Domingos DaRosa, a longtime activist and co-founder of the South End – Roxbury Community Partnership advocacy group, said he has little faith in the idea since it’s likely to meet resistance from the surrounding suburbs and beyond.
“If the governor is not willing take on this initiative, it’s going to be a tough task to push the agenda,” DaRosa told GBH News.
“There’s no way in the world that I see Swampscott taking the initiative to bring in treatment centers within Swampscott town lines,” said DaRosa. “Folks are not able to get services in their own city or town, and that’s done deliberately because, again, everything’s being pushed to Boston.”
FitzGerald said he hopes the hearing order is sent to the council’s committee on public health, homelessness and recovery which he chairs.
