Forget Widett Circle.
If Boston Mayor Michelle Wu needs “a temporary new approach” to alleviate the Mass and Cass drug and homeless nightmare, she ought to take into account using Fenway Park.
The ballpark is empty and can stay empty till the spring when the hapless Boston Red Sox return for an additional dismal season. The final positioned hometown crew’s final 2023 sport was Sunday in Baltimore.
Not that relocating the tent dwelling for down and out drug addicted souls from Mass and Cass is an answer to the issue. But relocating them to Fenway Park for the winter would give Wu time to give you a greater concept.
It would additionally carry the homeless in from the chilly. It would finish the apply of tearing down the tents solely to have them shortly reappear and provides Boston time to scrub up the crime-ridden space.
Pitching their tents within the enclosed construction of Fenway Park would a minimum of present some aid from winter storms in addition to a way of safety. Crime and violence at Mass and Cass has been an ongoing drawback.
It would additionally enable Boston Police the flexibility to acknowledge and take out drug sellers at the moment working within the open-air Mass and Cass drug market. These are sellers who prey on the 100 to 150 or so drugged out residents who make Mass and Cass their residence.
Authorities would have far more management if the drug addicts had been housed in Fenway Park the place they’d be protected against predators, a minimum of quickly.
The Fenway Park concept is proposed within the wake of a failed neighborhood $10 million proposal to relocate the homeless encampment at Mass and Cass (Massachusetts Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard) within the South End to a proposed everlasting restoration campus at close by Widett Circle on land owned by the MBTA.
Wu, whereas thanking the residents for his or her concept, stated the plan was not possible and Gov. Maura Healey shot it down anyway.
Wu’s final plan is to ship homeless drug customers to metropolis owned Long Island to be handled at present constructions that want restoration. To accomplish that, nonetheless, the town must rebuild the Long Island Bridge that was demolished in 2014 for security causes.
While the town has acquired a key allow to rebuild the bridge, it nonetheless faces opposition from Quincy officers and residents. The solely highway to the bridge goes via the Squantum part of Quincy.
That resolution, if it ever takes place, is sooner or later. Wu wants to scrub up Mass and Cass now, if solely on a brief foundation. It would a minimum of present that she was on prime of the issue.
However, getting Fenway Park to comply with the proposal is one other factor.
The park and the Boston Red Sox are owned by John Henry who additionally owns the Boston Globe, which his spouse Linda Pizzuti runs.
The homeowners have been staunch supporters of all issues progressive and woke, together with minority rights, variety, inclusion, civil rights, fairness, LGBTQIA+ rights, youngster trans rights, racism, unlawful immigration, drug dependancy and homelessness, so the concept is price contemplating.
Not solely would it not be a serving to hand to the town and the state, however it will additionally make nationwide headlines and increase the picture of Henry, the Red Sox and the Boston Globe.
The concept will not be as far-fetched because it appears. John Henry made his progressive credentials fairly clear when he purchased the Red Sox and altered the title of Yawkey Way, named after philanthropist Tom Yawkey, his predecessor, to its authentic title of Jersey Street.
Henry stated he was “haunted” by Yawkey’s alleged racism. The Red Sox beneath Yawkey had been the lasts main league crew to rent a black participant.
Lost within the renaming was the truth that Jersey Street, just like the neighboring streets in growing Boston in 1850, was named after an English noble—George Agustus Frederick Child Villiers, the sixth Earl of Jersey. His household, just like the household of the others, made its fortune from the slave commerce earlier than the English abolished it in 1833.
But that’s one other story.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”