Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is contemplating an ordinance that might strengthen town’s capability to implement a tent ban at Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, as a part of her new strategy to deal with escalating violence within the space.
Wu mentioned her administration is planning to finalize language for a possible ordinance “over the next couple of weeks.” This would give extra tooth to town’s present anti-encampment insurance policies, together with the manager order that former Acting Mayor Kim Janey signed within the fall of 2021, she mentioned.
These insurance policies proved to be ineffective the final time the mayor tried to implement a ban on tents at Mass and Cass, at first of May.
“We’re really looking to codify that in an ordinance that would empower the Boston Police to have clear authority and ability to help manage what our public health outreach teams are asking for,” Wu mentioned, “which is to help make sure that we’re not shielding and creating the opportunities for weapons and trafficking and other types of criminal activity to happen in the area.”
Prior to taking that type of motion, Wu mentioned her administration should “take stock” of how a tent ban would affect the necessity for instant in a single day or low-threshold housing. The upcoming winter months and colder climate are additionally factoring into her determination, she mentioned at a Thursday press briefing.
She is weighing that with the necessity to scale back the violence occurring there, saying that the variety of individuals searching for shelter at Mass and Cass is “much smaller” than those that are coming to the world to interact in prison exercise.
“It’s a very, very difficult situation when there are so many residents in need gathered in one location, and there are also individuals who are looking to prey on people or exploit the vulnerabilities that are there,” Wu mentioned, later including, “The concern has been that when we see the types of violence or drug trafficking that is concerning, it is often connected to and shielded by tents in the area.”
The tents are a “real barrier to safety,” Wu’s Mass and Cass coordinator Tania Del Rio added, particularly when town is offering different shelter choices for the homeless.
Along with stopping police from seeing the “very dangerous activity” occurring inside, “they are also undermining the case management and public health work that’s ongoing in the area,” Del Rio mentioned.
The mayor’s plan for a possible ordinance represents the newest glimpse on the “major step” her administration plans to take to deal with the elevated violence and prison exercise occurring at Mass and Cass this summer season.
Wu mentioned an ordinance could be only one component of a multi-faceted strategy, and wouldn’t clear up any a part of the state of affairs by itself.
The metropolis’s new strategy to reinforce public security will happen alongside work already occurring within the space, Del Rio mentioned, which incorporates connecting individuals with housing and habit therapy alternatives.
Amelia Caramadre, a senior authorized fellow at Northeastern University’s Health and Justice Action Lab, criticized the mayor’s plans for a possible anti-encampment ordinance.
“Enforcing a tent ban means that people will be involuntarily displaced and distanced from their health services, community, and home,” she instructed the Herald in a Friday electronic mail. “Such involuntary displacement has been shown to increase the morbidity and mortality of those impacted.”
A ban would possible be topic to a constitutional problem, Caramadre mentioned.
“Courts have opined that tent bans and other efforts to criminalize people who are houseless are unconstitutional, when no reasonable housing options are available,” Leo Beletsky, a professor of regulation at Northeastern and the lab’s director, added.
In different information, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden plans to carry a press convention Monday at The Greater Boston Food Bank “to thank the governor and Suffolk County delegation for appropriating $1 million for the Mass and Cass Services Over Sentences Program” within the state price range, and description how the funding shall be used, his workplace mentioned in an electronic mail.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”