Boston’s long-established homeless camp overlooked as priority given to immigrants for housing.
Mass and Cass: A Troubled Neighborhood in Upscale Boston
Just a few miles from the ivory halls of Harvard College and blocks from some of the most expensive real estate in the country is a deplorable out-in-the-open encampment of wandering drug users, a plethora of homeless Americans including U.S. veterans, mentally ill, suspected human trafficking, and heaps of scattered trash that looks more like a staged scene in a movie on the ghetto district of downtown LA than upscale Boston.
The South End/Roxbury neighborhood, known as “Mass and Cass” for its location at the corner of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, has for a long time been in its condition. “Ever since I can remember,” retired Massachusetts State Trooper Daralyn Heywood, who served as the first female commander of the state police of the South End barracks, told The Epoch Times.
Heywood, a Republican, made an unsuccessful bid for state senate last year. She now works as a private investigator.
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She and others familiar with Boston politics are outraged by an unintended hypocrisy born out of a recent power grab over the troubled neighborhood—one they say underscores just how far gone the American government is when it comes to taking care of illegal immigrants “over their own.”
“It’s just disgusting. We have Citizens of the United States, some veterans, in desperate need of help in a right-to-shelter state, yet we are buying up hotels for illegals,” said Massachusetts State Rep. Peter Durant (R-Spencer).
The unwitting hypocrisy brought on by government officials began a little over a week ago when Boston City Council President Ed Flynn, son of legendary Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, became acting Mayor during a 10-day vacation taken by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
Three days into Mayor Wu’s vacation, Mr. Flynn declared public outrage over Mass and Cass, released an open letter calling for its cleanup, and brought along local press for a walkthrough of the neighborhood.
Flynn told the Boston Herald, “It was worse than [he] thought,” and told a local podcast that it was so dangerous that outreach workers had to be pulled from the area. Mr. Flynn suggested a warrant sweep.
Not long after Mr. Flynn’s public decries, Wu’s press office issued a public statement indicating that “while she is physically unavailable,” she would “still be making all major decisions that need to be made” relevant to the neighborhood.
Her office also said there would be no warrant sweep.
The “mayoral miff,” as termed by one national media outlet, fell in the same week Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency over what she called a crisis in a shortage of housing and public services for the “rapidly rising number of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts.”
Weeks earlier, it was revealed Healey had allocated millions of taxpayer dollars across the state to secure entire hotels and other housing for thousands of immigrants.
But neither she, Mayor Wu, nor Mr. Flynn has made any moves to declare a state of emergency for housing for the people of Mass and Cass. “It’s hypocrisy at its highest level,” said Durant.
In May, Rep. Durant filed a records request with Gov. Healey’s office asking for an exact figure of the money being pumped into housing for illegal immigration and also for a list of the specific hotels that she was securing with the money.
He made the records request after learning Healey had secured housing in 28 towns for 3,853 migrants, with more entering the state daily.
Gov. Healey denied Rep. Durant’s request claiming that the “Office of the Governor is not subject to the Massachusetts public records law.”
He and Mrs. Heywood and others, including an on-site social worker who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity, questioned why Mr. Flynn, Mayor Wu, and Gov. Healey aren’t declaring state of emergencies for the estimated 200 people that make up the Boston encampment.
Mrs. Heywood said years ago, when the population at Mass and Cass was much higher, police were at least able to bring some of the worst cases from there to the government-run mental health facilities, but she said they were defunded and closed.
“If they are spending millions on housing immigrants and really concerned about humanitarian needs, why not for their own?” asked Mrs. Heywood.
She said while there is definitely a mixture of violent criminals, heavy drug users and people with what she called “hardcore,” mental illnesses, many also just need housing and outreach services, like those being provided to immigrants.
Despite his push for public attention to the Mass and Cass plight, Flynn did not respond to repeated inquiries from The Epoch Times.
The only move so far to fix the problem was to take away the tents and other makeshift shelters, including a construct of cardboard boxes and tarps, which was done under Mayor Wu’s administration and Mr. Flynn’s watch as head of the Boston City Council.
Gov. Healey was still serving as Massachusetts attorney general at the time.
A Jan. 12, 2022, picture that ran in Politico shows a bulldozer scooping up their only means of housing along with furniture and other items that made up the only place they called home.
Since then, a whole new landscape of such makeshift housing has returned.
Fueling the allegations of hypocrisy against Mr. Flynn, Mayor Wu, and Gov. Healey, all of whom have promoted the Black Lives Matter slogan, is the neighborhood’s backstory as a place meant to symbolize an improved life for laborers, minorities, and the less fortunate.
Melnea Cass Boulevard, the epicenter of the squalid district, is named after a local civil rights activist and co-founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union for African-American employees who worked for the local railroad cars manufacturer The Pullman Company.
Rep. Durant said there is “just no excuse to buy at the very least to house the people, especially the veterans who served this country,” alongside immigrants at the hotels being paid for by taxpayers.”
Mrs. Heywood called it the “ultimate government betrayal” and questioned why the hypocrisy isn’t angering more.
Meanwhile, the situation has proven to be a double-edged sword for businesses that contend with the residual effects of the Mass and Cass community.
Last year, business owner Domingos DaRosa told CBS News that his property is not only riddled on a daily basis with used needles, but some of the residents are starting to use them to threaten property owners who kick them off their property.
DaRosa, who was later issued a court summons in 2020 for taking some of the used hypodermic needles from Mass and Cass and dumping them on the lawn of then Gov. Charlie Baker’s house in Swampscott, an oceanfront community about 15 miles north of Boston.
“What about OUR community? Who cares about the safety and inhumane conditions of our community impacted by this humanitarian crisis?” Mr. DaRosa asked in a Facebook post. He was later cited for harassment and ordered to stay away from Baker’s property.
Meet The People of Mass and Cass
On Saturday, (Aug 12), the day Mayor Wu was scheduled to return from her vacation and take back the rights, The Epoch Times walked into the zone of Mass and Cass with no police escort and spent the day talking to many of the hundreds of people who call the squalid encampment home.
One resident, a 27-year-old white man wearing a Red Sox hat who landed there at Mass and Cass after he and his mother got evicted, offered up a bottle of water, saying, “I know you must be hot standing out here all day.”
The young man who asked to remain anonymous told The Epoch Times that he knows “everyone thinks we’re all strung out druggies here, and we’re not.”
Another resident that spoke with The Epoch Times was Michael Banks, a tall black man who spoke especially articulately. Until just a few months ago, he lived in an apartment in nearby Roxbury until alcoholism, he admitted, “got the better of him.”
Mr. Banks, lucid and clearly not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, spoke about the disgust he felt about the way the city officials and media have portrayed the area, noting that when Flynn did his “media walkthrough,” he didn’t stop to talk to a single person living on the streets of Mass and Cass.
He said the same goes with the media, which has been running stories almost daily about the Flynn/Wu controversy alongside the stories about all the services being offered “unconditionally” to illegal immigrants.
“Nobody has bothered to come and talk to us,” he said, “you’re actually the first.”
Mr. Banks talks about how the media chooses to write about the smell of human urine, the scatter of needles, and people having sex in public—as if “we want to live in this.”
He said the encampment had been used as a “political freak show” and that he and others have talked about how degraded they feel over the “well-publicized priority” their own government officials are given to illegal immigrants over them.
“They’ve complained about food and scratchy sheets,” said Mr. Banks, “and we’re American citizens quite literally sleeping on the pavement.”
Asked about three recent stabbings reported here recently by the Boston police and even a stolen dog traced recovered near the encampment, Banks responded, “Yeah, of course, there’s some bad people here.”
“That’s what happens when you put all your homeless people, from people with severe drug addictions to people who just shouldn’t be out on the streets, in one spot with no bathrooms and no privacy,” he said.
He pointed to one man standing alone, talking to himself with his eyes closed, and rubbing his arms seemingly uncontrollably. The Epoch Times also observed many disabled people including a man who was missing his foot and was confined to a wheelchair.
“Where are Flynn and Healey’s concerns for him?” he asked.
Until recently, Danielle Boyle, one of the dozens of women who call the encampment home, worked at a local Dunkin’ and lived in a trailer in nearby Revere.
Ms. Boyle said when the property was sold, she was told to leave because the trailer was being moved.
The 39-year-old admitted she had a troubled life and struggled with an addiction to cocaine and heroin. She spoke fluently with The Epoch Times for more than an hour, in large part about all the attempts she has made to get housing and being told “there was a waiting list.”
“I’d kill to be in any hotel room.”
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