By Alison Barnet
A former neighbor put it in perspective when he said we’re lucky to live near a public hospital where we can’t be deluded about what’s happening in America. Did he also mean we can’t be deluded about our neighbors’ hateful attitudes toward the homeless and drug addicted around so-called “Mass. and Cass”?
A new neighbor complains about everything “homeowners”—but not tenants?—have to put up with: people peeing on doorsteps, yelling in the middle of the night, flinging their arms around, needles on the sidewalk. Another neighbor sits on his steps yelling at homeless and drug-addicted people, and his partner takes pictures. Homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness are not crimes but around here you’d think they were. The neighborhood association wants everyone to put NO TRESPASSING signs on their stoops and plans to somehow target people selling drugs (with no mention of the Sacklers, other big-time drug pushers, and hospital staff). It claims many drug users have addresses outside of Boston, which somehow proves they shouldn’t be here, but—hey!—where did our privileged new homeowners live before now? Although many many people in this country fear displacement, the rich don’t.
Certainly, going to the bathroom where there’s no bathroom is disgusting and yelling in the middle of the night is more than annoying. Although we may not be able to change anything, we can still have compassion—like my cat who’s old and has begun to yell, which bothers me a lot, but I recognize she can’t help it.
Residents don’t want to remember when the South End was a neighborhood of rooming houses; in fact, a long-time president of our neighborhood association was a rooming house landlady. But if a rooming house was proposed today, they’d fight against it. At the same time, they support luxury housing, local liquor licenses and cannabis.
The bigger picture
The “Mass. and Cass” phenomenon is hardly restricted to Boston’s South End; it’s country-wide. And it’s going to get worse when Trump cuts Medicaid, housing prices continue to go up, and more elderly people become homeless. Trump will be doing more than peeing on our doorsteps.
What would Kip Tiernan, founder of Rosie’s Place and the Boston Food Pantry, say? She identified the causes of homelessness as “Urban Renewal, Gentrification, Deinstitutionalization, Veterans Trauma, and Drug and Alcohol Addiction.” Kip knew first-hand about this neighborhood association’s hatred of the homeless when Rosie’s Place encountered tremendous opposition to moving to Washington Street and was later torched. Over time, she saw “a growing contempt and hostility toward those for whom there is no room at the Inn…Who decides who gets the condo and who gets the cardboard box?”
“The general public’s disdain for homeless people is palpable, and it’s reflected in the way our government treats poverty,” wrote Elijah Horwath in the UMass newspaper, in article targeting “anti-homeless infrastructure”—the inaccessibility of public benches.
“Bienvenue” it says on walls/seats up Mass. Ave. at Christian Science. Imagine if benches around here bore that message?
Alison Barnet is a longtime South End resident and the author of five books on the neighborhood’s history.