Boston city workers began to clear tents Monday morning near the troubled intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue as part of an effort to enforce a new encampment ban across the city.
Monday marked the beginning of a three-day clearing. Outreach workers, police officers and city employees are working to take down the more than 75 tents, place personal items in storage and move some 90 people in the area into shelters.
Defense budget of which you speak is federal not state, and literally takes years to adjust
Take from police budgets, create social investment programs that drive $$ to shelters, medical, and social help to help people get to a self sustainable living. Pay social workers a living wage, fund groups, employ auditors, enforce transparency, and welcome journalists
I don't have a solution, but an idea just came to me.
For every non-primary residence someone/some company owns, add a tax that goes to a fund. That fund is then used to purchase land, build and maintain 1-4 bedroom housing, and provide utilities/services.
Anyone should have access to this housing, but it must be lived in or you lose that access. Each state should implement it so Texas doesn't just send everyone to Oregon.
I think there should definitely be a progressive tax rate on owning single family homes for any purpose other than living in. The more homes owned the higher the tax rate. One of the only reasons I don’t know if I want the government building & maintaining homes is look at how royally they screwed up public housing. I think those homes would turn into festering shit holes in a couple years just from the lack of maintenance. Personally I’d prefer to see a substantial tax credit and preferred interest rate for first time home buyers. I’d also support government lending. My federal student loans were the easiest to pay back.
The tax part already exists. In most states you can have one property be your homestead, which reduces the property taxes. Every other property therefore pays more in taxes.
The problem is that once you set up the shanty towns, they will never go away. And as someone who was raised in central america, shanty towns is the last thing you want in your city
Rewarding people for not working and sitting around and doing drugs all day is what leads to what you see in these cities. The more they don’t work and cause chaos, the more people rush to them with free shit and demands for them to get more money.
What’s he getting from these statements that make you assert he’s selfish? They aren’t saying, “Give it all to me.” They’re saying that if you make life sustainable while succumbing to vice, people will take them up on it.
The poor will always resent the homeless. They have shit homes that they’ve sacrificed for, and they are disproportionately the victims of theft from homeless due to proximity. Then they see the people they’ve watched, being as a kite for 5 years, get newly built housing for free and non-stop handouts.
Obviously, they should all be on the same side, but thats just not how human emotions work.
What if they figure out they’ll just set up their tent elsewhere? Just keep kicking them out and repeating the cycle eternally? Because other than being cruel, I don’t see the point.
For Boston specifically, they could rebuild the Long Island Bridge, which before its demolition was a usable footpath for addicts seeking treatment to get to Long Island, which at one point housed a hospital and even after the hospital’s closure offered facilities for those in need including a homeless shelter and rehabilitation programs.
The area the article discusses, called politely “Mass and Cass,” is also referred to as “methadone mile” and it does not really have comparable facilities to help those in need. Methadone mile sprang up when the BU medical center became the only real place where addicts can get treatment to try and wean off their drug addiction, and it’s a real problem even for the addicts as there is very easy access to genuine opiods.
Stressful street living + constant presence of dealers + no facilities besides a regulated hospital = a really fucking impossible way to kick your addiction.
Methadone mile needs to go. Boston also needs the neighboring town of Quincy to stop fighting the rebuilding of the Long Island Bridge.
Shit take, brah. They’re moving these people into shelters, where they’ll receive services to help them get off of drugs and into a conventional life, which includes stable-ish housing.
In all fairness, this sounds much more humane than what’s been happening in some other areas.
Outreach workers, police officers and city employees are working to take down the more than 75 tents, place personal items in storage and move some 90 people in the area into shelters.
They referred her to one of several nearby shelters where some 100 extra beds have been set aside for those affected by the clearing.
City workers are currently focusing on connecting people with treatment, shelter or family reunification […]
While I can’t speak to the effectiveness of this, it’s at least better than the “Throw it all in a dumpster and tell them to leave without giving it any additional thought” plan that’s been executed elsewhere.
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