Mayor Michelle Wu’s looking for a brand new Mass and Cass czar as Dr. Monica Bharel wraps up her tenure on the finish of the month.
“Dr. Bharel is scheduled to leave her role at the end of the month,” town stated in an announcement. “The City is actively searching and interviewing potential candidates to serve as the principal liaison across City agencies and constituents to ensure that we are identifying, prioritizing and following through in a timely manner on the daily service people and our neighborhoods need.”
This isn’t a shock, as Bharel has stated because the winter that she’s solely on a six-month contract as Wu’s pointwoman on the problems on the space of the South End often known as Mass and Cass, the place an open-air drug market thrives and folks frequently might be seen promoting and doing medication.
Bharel was one of many architects of what’s seen as a profitable effort in January to take down the tons of of tents within the space, and he or she was a significant a part of two plans launched in her final full week on the job — paperwork launched Tuesday about short-term plans for the summer season in addition to a longer-term “strategic” plan.
“For the past six months, Dr. Bharel has led our City’s multi-departmental response to this humanitarian crisis with an unwavering commitment to improving the lives of others and focus on the details of how to immediately see results,” Wu stated in an announcement to the Herald on Tuesday. “Her work has reshaped how Boston will respond to supporting people experiencing unsheltered homelessness and substance use.”
Bharel was a high-profile early rent by Wu after her election win in November, when Wu introduced her on as a senior adviser.
Bharel, who’s previously labored in homeless advocacy, was simply coming off a stretch because the state’s public well being commissioner and had been a well-known face on TV within the early days of the pandemic when Wu tapped her to coordinate town’s response to a few of its most complicated and intractable problems with homelessness, drug abuse and the confluence of them within the space often known as Mass and Cass or Methadone Mile.
She’s additionally been a daily defending the administration’s Mass and Cass insurance policies in public conferences with skeptical close by neighborhood teams, who typically voiced appreciation with Bharel’s engagement with them even when they aren’t at all times thrilled with town’s general choices.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”