Days after Mayor Michelle Wu officially launched her bid for a second term, challenger Josh Kraft vowed to clean up the area known as Mass. and Cass, critiquing Wu’s handling of the situation and revealing a “recovery first” plan that includes stepped up police enforcement, and a new recovery campus to provide detox services and temporary housing support.
“Mass. and Cass is a human tragedy, and it’s a public safety threat that the mayor does not want to talk about because she does not know how to fix it,” said Kraft at a Monday news conference staged outside the Roxbury-South End restaurant Doña Habana. Kraft said he would focus on deploying police with a new mandate to proactively enforce laws against public drug use and trespassing.
“Once it’s clear that public drug use and indefinite street living is no longer an option, the more likely it’ll be that people will seek and accept the help they need,” Kraft said, adding that he would prosecute crimes fueled by drug use in specialized courts “such as a recovery court or a mental health court,” to help steer people into treatment. “The goal will be for the addicted to receive services, not sentences,” he said.
Kraft’s plan would break from Wu’s “housing first” model that focused on providing shelter — an approach he critiqued as one “that too often leaves people perpetually stuck in the painful grip of addiction.”
“I will establish Recover Boston, a campus to provide seamless addiction recovery, mental health services, and temporary housing support,” he said. Kraft said he is waiting to discuss with other stakeholders, but added he is open to a previous suggestion of the area known as Widett Circle, where South Boston, the South End and Roxbury meet as a potential recovery campus location.
Kraft said that he would also revive a community syringe exchange program. His plan comes as Boston’s campaign season gets underway in earnest.
The area around the intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue was a major early focal point of the Wu administration after she campaigned with a vow to find housing for people living in tents and, later, enforced the destruction of tent encampments. In the years since, the people who called tents home have spread out to create makeshift homes in other areas of the city.
Most recently, despite Wu’s familiar refrain that Boston is the safest major city in the United States, residents and business owners in Boston’s downtown area have complained of violence and setup a safety-focused task force within the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association. Kraft thanked the group for contributing input to his plan.
In response, Wu defended her record in the issue.
“Within my first two months in office, my administration took action to deliver more impact at Mass. and Cass than in eight years before,” she said in a statement.
An official with Wu’s re-election campaign said that, under her tenure, the Boston Police have already implemented special booking, reporting and staffing changes to focus on the Mass. and Cass area.
“Over the last three years we have ended permanent encampments in Boston, created housing and recovery beds, and directed all City departments to coordinate in ending congregate outdoor substance use. It’s an insult to the daily efforts of Boston Police officers, public health workers, and community partners to ignore their ongoing progress and take solutions that have already been implemented as “new ideas” for a political platform.
Domingos DaRosa, a mayoral candidate and activist who was ordered to stay away from Gov. Charlie Baker’s home after leaving used needles outside in protest, said Kraft’s plan is reminiscent of proposals he and the South End-Roxbury Community Partnerships advocacy group drafted during the last mayoral race, and lacks a crucial component: a push for equitable services statewide.
“As we say here in the community — where have you been?” DaRosa told GBH News, noting that Boston has been a recovery epicenter for people struggling with addiction across the state.
“Until we can replicate these services outside of Boston, we’re going to still be saturated with the issues on Mass. and Cass,” he said.
In a press release, Kraft said would aim to put his proposed recovery center within Greater Boston, given that many in Boston’s shelter and homelessness services system are from outside the city.
Kraft described the area as a crisis Wu promised but ultimately “failed to solve” with two faces — one focusing on the people who inhabit the area’s streets and typically suffer from a confluence of issues like addiction, poverty, homelessness and mental health conditions; the other, Kraft said, “tells a story of pervasive public disorder” in a city that lacks command of drug dealing and property crime.
“That failure has resulted in these problems spreading across the city that we all love, from the South End to Roxbury and South Boston to Downtown Crossing and Boston Common and around Copley Square, victimizing residents and businesses alike.”
Voices from the drug use and addiction recovery space had mixed reactions to Kraft’s plan Monday afternoon.
John McGann, former president of the addiction-focused Gavin Foundation, said he supports Kraft’s proposal of increased police enforcement, particularly against those who make money selling drugs or facilitating prostitution in the area.
“Those are the people that the criminal justice system should be and needs to be involved [with] so that we can work with the people that are addicted to substances and get them in treatment,” he said.
Housing-first models like Wu’s, he added, raise concerns.
“I don’t want anybody homeless out on the street, but I think it’s focused on putting them in housing prior to treating their addiction or mental illness,” he said. “If they’re not practicing some form of recovery, how are they ever going to be self-sustaining within that [housing] unit? Are we setting them up for success that way?”
Azzy Mae, a member of the New England Users Union, a coalition of people who advocate for harm reduction policies, called Kraft’s plan almost indiscernible from what Wu has executed throughout her first term and said both plans miss the mark.
“We do not need a more punitive approach to a problem that punitive approaches has not solved yet,” they said. “Neither candidate is embracing, truly, harm reduction. ... Both are shifting back to this hardline approach directed towards people who use drugs and this belief that compelling people into [drug] abstinence through carceral systems is going to be what helps. And we know that it’s not.”
