Ishmael Rodriguez slept in a tent for almost a year near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, or Mass. and Cass, the city’s longtime epicenter of homelessness and substance use disorder.
The 57-year-old man mostly kept to himself, spending his days at a nearby hospital clinic and sleeping in a tent.
The setup was more secure, he says, than the streets and parks he’d slept in since losing his Dorchester apartment in 2021.
“I had a spot where I could cut into a little cubby corner and stay inconspicuous,” he said. “I didn't really have any problems about anybody bothering me there at night.”
His respite ended last fall when police officers, city workers, garbage crews and bulldozers descended on the area to remove some 75 tents and enforce a ban on homeless encampments across Boston.
“It was getting to the point where [police] were coming and bothering me every day,” Rodriguez said. “So I figured, let me get out of here.”
Since then he says he’s back to sleeping in alleys, park benches and train stations, searching for dark corners of the city where he can be left undisturbed.
“It was crazy over there, and I don’t disagree that it needed to be shut down,” said Rodriguez, sitting on a bench on the Boston Common last Wednesday. “But they should have been able to place people somewhere they can at least be a little bit, you know, free.”
Rodriguez is part of a diaspora of Mass. and Cass dwellers now spread across the city, moving into new encampments hidden in state-owned parks, under bridges, tunnels and highway underpasses, or just beyond city limits in Cambridge or Somerville.
Hundreds of people used to congregate at Mass. and Cass, drawn to the area’s concentration of shelters, medical clinics and detox centers. For many years, it became a place for people to live in tents without police disruption or use drugs with impunity. In the four months since the ordinance sweep, people still gather there, but crowds have grown smaller, leaving some local medical providers, outreach workers and harm reduction advocates wondering where everyone went.
Rich Baker, the deputy director of prevention at harm-reduction nonprofit Victory Programs, says it’s been difficult to keep in touch with clients, leading to concerns about fatal overdoses. Outreach workers who once saw an average of 20 to 30 people a day around Mass. and Cass. now see between four and, at most, ten, he said.
“We definitely lost touch with a very, very large volume of people, post–encampment closure, that we haven't been able to find or follow up with,” he said. “A lot of folks just completely left the area altogether.”
City officials say they've expanded outreach to people across the city, offering shelter, treatment, storage and transportation.
“We definitely lost touch with a very, very large volume of people, post–encampment closure, that we haven't been able to find or follow up with.”Rich Baker, deputy director of prevention at Victory Programs
Increased police presence
In the first few days of the sweep, city officials said 73 people were placed in low-threshold transitional housing and 23 were directed to shelters.
But homeless advocates say many more people have grown afraid of seeking services near Mass. and Cass, worried about being picked up by police on past warrants or simply for being homeless.
“It’s changed behaviors,” Baker said. “It’s changed the way people access programs.”
The area is overseen by a team of private security guards funded by an annual $2.1 million in American Rescue Plan Funds. An influx of new police officers are now authorized to arrest anyone who “remains in the street in willful violation” of the city ordinance. A central booking agreement between the city and Boston Police Department allows detainees to be held in a local jail prior to their arraignments.
City officials maintain that no one has been arrested for refusing to move a tent, but a heavy police presence has prevented the construction of new encampments and resulted in hundreds of arrests across the two-mile stretch.
Boston Police officers have conducted 283 arrests in the immediate area around Mass. and Cass between November of last year and February, according to Detective Sergeant John Boyle.
In the last five months, police have also increased enforcement around specific crimes: from October of last year through February 2024, warrant arrests increased by 34% as compared to the same time period in the previous year. Arrests for the use, manufacture, selling or possession or drug paraphernalia increased by 22%, and arrests for drinking in public went up by 19%, according to a GBH News analysis of police arrest data.
“The system that we exist under creates this growing distrust between the people who need services and service providers,” said Azzy-Mae Ní Mháille, a representative of the New England Users Union, a local advocacy group for people who use drugs.
A 47-year-old man from Cambridge — who asked to be identified by his first initial, G, to protect his privacy — said he lived on Mass. and Cass for six years but now is reluctant to return because of his criminal record.
“Nobody wants to help me because my criminal background is a little messed up,” he said. “I used to sell a lot of drugs, but I stopped doing that. I'm sober now. I'm trying to get my life together.”
Now living under a bridge near South Station, G says setting up a tent is risky anywhere in the city. He tries to keep a low profile, installing his tent after nightfall and packing up every morning to venture back out to the streets.
“It’s brutal. They don’t really allow you to sleep certain places,” said G. “They have park rangers and people patrolling the area, so you gotta find a spot.”
Ní Mháille says many people experiencing homelessness had long been told to go to the Mass. and Cass area. Now they are spreading out to other areas, like Downtown Crossing, Copley Square, Alewife and North Station.
“We're seeing a return of people to the spaces that they initially had been kind of pushed away from and forced into Mass. and Cass," they said.
Limited support amid multiple crises
The new encampments reflect multiple intersecting crises, as residents grapple with rising housing insecurity and state leaders scramble to help an influx of migrant families find somewhere to sleep beyond hospital emergency rooms or the floor at Logan Airport.
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The impact of the migrant crisis has left chronically homeless residents with even fewer options, leading people like G and Rodriguez to become more nomadic, sheltering from the cold in South Station or the Downtown Crossing area.
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Boston rose 17.2% last year — from 4,439 people in 2022 to 5,202 people in 2023 — and the number of unsheltered people living on the street jumped by 42%, according to last year’s annual homeless census.
Family homelessness has skyrocketed, reaching a record high last year with 7,543 families in the emergency shelter system, according to state data. As of February, more than 700 families are on a waitlist for emergency shelter; about half of families in the state’s caseload are Massachusetts residents.
Last month, Wu announced a plan to convert the Engagement Center on Atkinson Street — a daytime resource center for people at Mass. and Cass — into a temporary overnight shelter for individual adult men, including migrants. At a press briefing, she said about 25% of those staying in individual shelters are newly arrived migrants.
Last year’s sweep was one of several major clearings around Mass. and Cass in the last few years. Housing advocates say there are fewer resources for people experiencing homelessness this year than following previous sweeps. During a clearing in 2022, the city created six low-threshold housing sites. Since then, 214 people from Mass. and Cass have been moved into permanent housing, according to city officials.
But last fall, without new housing resources, outreach workers had to lean on an already overburdened emergency shelter system.
Expansion and sweeps of existing encampments
While some recently displaced people continue drifting through the city, others have moved into existing encampments, where residents say sweeps have become more frequent in recent months.
Victoria and her partner Michael, who asked to go by their middle names, say they lived together in a tunnel under the Copley Square highway off-ramp for about two years, until state troopers came with an eviction notice shortly after the ordinance went into effect.
They set up camp under a bridge that spans the Charles River, a site that’s already been swept multiple times by police and cleaning crews. After a recent sweep of the encampment in late January, the couple disbanded and then returned last month to rebuild their precarious home.
The couple says they would rather live outside than in a shelter, where they have been victims of violence. Michael, who is 42, says he has been homeless since he was a teenager. He had a meeting with a caseworker in January that he says he wishes he could be optimistic about.
“I am hopeful, but society’s changed my outlook on things so much. Just the way my life has gone over the years, something will come up and we’ll be put back at the bottom of the list again,” he said. “I try not to get too excited for anything, because I’m always afraid that it’s going to get taken away.”
Their encampment is home to a small community of neighbors: Joey, boyish a 36-year old who met the couple after living out on Mass. and Cass in 2021; Cat, a 50-year-old woman from East Boston who makes chicken soup for everyone on cold nights; Mike, Cat’s husband of 35 years; Shannon, a 40-year-old nail artist, and a handful of friends — Shannon calls them “belongers”— who stay in their small community.
“This is my family,” Shannon said. “I’ll be damned if anybody's going to try to push us apart.”
Shannon moved into the bridge encampment around six years ago, after living at Mass. and Cass and going through a detox program.
“We had quite an abundance of people at one point, a compound with probably like nine tents,” she said. “At one point, for almost two years, we didn’t have one complaint. [Police] didn’t bother us, they didn’t come see us, but now it’s a problem.”
After a fire at a nearby encampment last summer and the city’s zero-tolerance policy on tents, Shannon says sweeps have become more frequent.
“We’re here because we have nowhere else to go,” she said. “We just want to be left alone.”
