No Permanent Housing Means Mass And Cass Evictees Will Be Back On The Streets, Says ACLU Exec. Director

Boston resumed enforcement this week of a tent ban at the area known as Mass and Cass, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, which has become a focal point for the city's homelessness and substance use resources.

Hundreds of people rushed to clear out their tents and shove their belongings in plastic bins on Monday to meet the city's deadline to clear the area. Many said they did not want to go to the shelters offered by the city, according to a GBH News report.

Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday the city should be making a housing-first effort, not evicting people and offering temporary shelter or involuntarily committing them to live in a detention center, as proposed by Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins.

"The people are going to be back — unless we're going to have a situation where we're going to involuntarily detain people for being homeless indefinitely, which is obviously not constitutional — they're going to be back on the street," Rose said.

Acting Mayor Kim Janey issued an executive order last month providing people living in tents with rooms at two separate overnight shelters for men and women in the neighborhood, information about substance use recovery services and free storage of their possessions in a 27-gallon container for a maximum of 90 days.

Rose referenced a 2016 study from the Massachusetts Dept. of Health, which found that people who receive involuntary treatment are actually 2.2 times more likely to die of opioid-related overdoses than people who receive voluntary treatment.

"The roots of the crisis at Mass and Cass — it's substance use disorder, mental health, economic justice — but mostly it's a housing shortage problem," she said. "The ACLU has been very clear throughout, we can't arrest our way out of the situation at Mass and Cass but in fact we have to start with housing first."

Rose noted that administrators often don't allow substance users to stay in their shelters, and they split up families by housing people in separate men's and women's dorms. She said expanding access to hotel rooms would help immediately, while more permanent and affordable homes are built.

"Can you imagine all the people who self medicate, they have a drink at night or they smoke or whatever, if you were to say right, you can't have a house until you're over your addiction? It doesn't work that way."