The state has issued a Request for Information (RFI) this week regarding the Shattuck Hospital site in Jamaica Plain – a document that will look to select participants to create a new public health use on the site when the Shattuck moves to the South End.
In the South End, the RFI was the topic of conversation on Tuesday at the South End Forum Opiate Working Group, where community members are anticipating that the new Shattuck uses would relieve some of the social service pressures now affecting quality of life in the neighborhood.
The RFI revealed the future vision of the Shattuck, which is a campus for mental health and substance abuse services coordinated with the coming Long Island recovery campus.
“To achieve this vision, the Commonwealth hopes to provide a continuum of mental health and substance use services, permanent supportive housing, emergency shelter and wrap-around supportive services for those in the behavioral health system,” read the RFI. “In addition, EOHHS seeks to create a healing environment on the future Campus that takes advantage of and integrates with the unique location adjacent to Franklin Park, provides broader community programing, and fosters social connectivity for clients and the broader community.”
The vision laid out in the RFI also includes supportive housing, which many believed would be part of the bargain.
“This vision includes redeveloping the Campus into a community-integrated setting that would provide a continuum of behavioral health and health care services, a minimum of 75-100 units of supportive housing and other complementary services,” it read.
Services outlined in the RFI include:
•Ambulatory behavioral health services, including urgent psychiatric care services
•Limited health service clinics or outpatient medical services
•Substance use and co-occurring disorder treatment and recovery services, including inpatient, residential and outpatient services
•Supportive housing or emergency shelter
•Job training or workforce development
•Pharmacy services
•Outreach, navigation, and education services for people with behavioral health needs
•Case management and other wrap-around services.
Moderator Steve Fox said he is encouraged that there is more cooperation in JP regarding the use of the Shattuck for recovery and support services.
“What’s important to us is we have turned the corner on the repurposing of the Shattuck Hospital campus because the beginning it was said it should be all open space,” he said. “Our message was there is a crisis and trees and open space don’t help solve the problem. We have turned a corner on that and even the Franklin Park Coalition has changed its tune on that.”
The RFI also stipulated that long-range planning for the Shattuck has included Boston’s plan for a Recovery Campus on Long Island, saying that they are looking at how the new use of the Shattuck could complement Long Island.
•VIDEO CAMERAS
The State Police have put up a surveillance camera on Bradston Street in the Mass/Cass area that captures virtually all parts of that major intersection and is already helping police identify victims and perpetrators of crime.
Sue Sullivan of the Newmarket Business Association said they are preparing to use some of the money from their new Business Improvement District (BID) program to outfit all of their streets with cameras.
“We are hoping as the Newmarket Business Association to put cameras phased in over three years as part of our BID,” she said. “We want to put cameras on every street in Newmarket.”
Officer Schuler of D-4 said they like cameras, and it helps them identify criminals after the fact.
“We would take all the video surveillance we can get,” he said.