The Housing First model has been proven time and time again to WORK!!!!

You know why a lot of the unhoused drink and do drugs? To keep them warm. To numb the physical and emotional pain. To make life at least a little bit bearable. If we house them they have warmth and dignity. They have a stable address so they can actually get jobs. They will get better and be able to support themselves in due time, if we just treat them like the human beings they are.

My time interning with the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless was such an eye opener. Everybody deserves the dignity of having a warm, safe place to sleep at night. No if, ands, or buts about it.

Overcoming addiction, getting a job, overcoming mental health challenges are all incredibly difficult things to do even if you have a home. Expecting people to do any of those things while living on the street is doomed to fail.

I’ve lived up the street from there for 10 years — the proposal is a good thing. Everyone deserves housing, and we’re only as strong as the neediest among us. Additionally, as a former public school teacher, I believe people need to stop using their kids as excuses to block this type of development — fairly presumptuous of them to assume another child’s parent or relative won’t benefit, which in turn helps the kid.

Will the nimbys win this round?

>"I have a huge heart and I definitely am for these type of projects, this just isn't the location," said Mancuso. "Our kids, I want them to be safe ... As a parent, I couldn't feel safe with my children walking the streets with this kind of homelessness, drugs."

She doesn't realize this is an effort to reduce homelessness and by extension, public drug use and crime?

>"We're maxed out, we don't need it," said Dillon. "Find somewhere else. There's a ton of places in the city that this can go in and, better yet, go outside the city. Why does Dorchester, Roxbury always have to take the brunt of this? And we're just ... we're done. We've had enough."

Yeah! Ship our homeless somewhere else. That's the solution /s

So everyone here is the “ all all for helping the homeless as long as it’s not my neighborhood” crowd lol

Very typical response… We want to help as long as you don’t bring it to my area.

Looks like a NIMBY who doesn’t understand the efficacy of social welfare programs came through and downvoted everyone, so I gave everyones solid contributions an updoot.

This is a great idea, and the fact that we even have space for it (unlike LA) is a sign that it needs to pass before the opportunity is too late. These naysayers don’t realize that this development will become something much less useful. And, instead of assisting our homeless with becoming healthy functioning members of society, they will remain on the street perpetuating whatever archaic ideas these people have of them.

It took like 1/3rd of my morning coffee to realize this is a good idea, come on nimbys, get your shitty Keurigs repaired or something and wake the fuck up

If you are a good person housing the homeless shouldn't be a problem.

Housing first initiatives work. It's evidence based. I'm all for it. Better than having them out in the middle of the street near the hospitals/shelters.

I think it’s more Dorchester residents are wondering why they’re being used as a dumping ground for the rest of the city at this point. This wouldn’t even enter the realm of possibility in any other neighborhood in the city. Plenty of places and buildings but for whatever reasons it seems to always be Dorchester. Not Back Bay, South End, Fenway, Seaport, Allston/Brighton, etc… The city is simply hiding this issue instead of dealing with it. It just all gets pushed into corners of Dorchester so the “main” city doesn’t have to deal with any of it.

This is such an odd area to be doing this in but just supports that the city is trying to hide the issue. It’s be nice if they took that entire warehouse wasteland between South Bay and Boston Medical and developed it instead of tearing down and building in this very remote area where there’s hardly any homeless folks and limited access to transit options.

800

900

Yeah .. the old "I have a huge heart .. .but". People like that should never ever be given a microphone, because all they're doing is rationalizing their own bigotry and stereotyping.

These people make my blood boil.

Downvotes me all you want but this is a terrible location for this kind of project. I'll start by saying that I have personally experienced homelessness as well as substance abuse and coexisting mental health issues and am very sympathetic to these people's struggles. I've also lived in Dorchester my entire life and am very familiar with the hotel and area they are talking about. It is literally directly across the street from a school (Murphy) as well as 2 blocks from another school (St. Ann's) , it's a 1 minute walk from a newly renovated baseball field/park/playground (Garvey), an ice hockey rink where kids play and practice everyday, and Tinean beach. Not to mention the residential neighborhoods that this hotel is right in the middle of. Call me a NIMBY all you want and on this issue I will take that hit because this is not the type of location that a program like this needs to be operating in. I'd like to think that something like this will lead to those housed here becoming contributing members of society who will help boost the local economy and all that but that's just idealistic, wishful thinking and frankly it's pretty ignorant. What will happen is the property and the surrounding area will be trashed with people getting high, crime increasing and turn into a micro Mass and Cass. I wish it wasn't true but it absolutely is and if you think otherwise then you're delusional! Something like this should be somewhere that isn't right in the middle of a beautiful residential neighborhood that will only be negatively impacted by it.

Bring on the hate....

It’s really a hard problem to solve.

Was this hotel a Doubletree about 20ish years ago?

I like this, but we really also need to address the mental health issues as well. I know the previous facilities were poorly run, so we need to improve upon that, but these people are out in the street a lot of times because they have severe mental disabilities. Many of these people should be hospitalized/institutionalized, rather than just thrown together into a big converted hotel with no oversight.

Affordable housing is a problem too. Tear down that abandoned building or convert it to units that are like these or maybe a little smaller. That regular people can actually afford! It's like people who are not wealthy are second class citizens or somehow undesirables.

Anyone that thinks just building housing, rounding up people and sticking them in it are deluding themselves. Many people don't WANT to come in from the cold, for a multitude of reasons.

For housing specifically, these people often don't have the faculties (physical, mental or emotional) to maintain a residence. Without intensive support in multiple other areas of life to adjust (which there is nowhere near enough of to cover everyone), they are doomed to failure.

>"Housing without support sets up people to fail," said Tod Lipka, president and CEO of Step Up on Second, a housing and service provider in Santa Monica, California. "It has to be a transformative experience."

>The challenges formerly homeless people face manifest in various ways, he said. Some continue to pile their belongings in a corner, a habit born out of the need to keep their possessions safe. Others, accustomed to sleeping in shelters, wake up at 6 a.m. to vacate their apartments, forgetting that those rules don't apply to private accommodations.

>Lipka recalls one client at Step Up on Second who screamed loudly every morning around 3 o'clock. It was a trick the man learned while living on the streets to protect himself by keeping others away.

>"I was on drugs and all out of whack," she said. "It took me a minute to finally see that Step Up was exactly what I was looking for. It was complicated to trust people who were trying to help me."

>Building trust is just the first part of securing stable housing. Many people who have experienced homelessness protect themselves by refusing to believe their situations can change, Lipka said.

>"Most of these individuals never think they can get housing again," he said. "You harden yourself against the hope and disappointment."

>Once people accept help, they must tackle bureaucracy. Case managers work with people to secure documentation, such as IDs or Social Security cards, needed to apply for financial assistance. After the paperwork is sorted, people receive housing vouchers.

>Walker spent a year living in a hotel room before finding a permanent apartment through Step Up on Second. She said the time indoors was crucial.

>"I didn't really have any home training," she said.

>That included cooking and even shopping for food, Walker said. At one point, she asked her case manager about how to handle fish. Walker wasn't sure whether it should be refrigerated or how long it would last. She learned the hard way.

>"My whole apartment stunk," she said, laughing at the memory.

This particular story has a happy ending for the subject, but this is sadly far closer to the exception than the rule.

>After months, even years, of sleeping on the sidewalks, in tents or in cars, for some residents learning to live in an apartment was not as simple as unlocking a door and stepping inside. It meant living on someone else’s terms. It meant paying bills, cleaning, remembering their keys when they stepped out.

>Leaving the streets also meant abandoning the past and imagining the future, which could be a challenge for anyone whose focus had been hour to hour.

>To ease confusion and loneliness, residents invited friends over who were still homeless. Some found it hard to accept that they had been given housing and others had not. Guilt could sabotage good fortune, trigger old behaviors.

>A visit could turn into an overnight, then a few days, then a few weeks, and weeks would lead to eviction. Visitors had nothing to lose by behaving badly. In their jealousy and envy, they didn’t care about lease agreements. Nor did they care that they were being watched to see if rules were being broken.

When will the long Island bridge be replaced? Best waterfront views of Boston.

NIMBYs at it again

NIMBY strikes again!

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NIMBYs gonna nimby.

“Not in my backyard”

No, no way, no! To the streets with you!

This demo of people always have more issue with this than gentrification, which can sometimes be traced back as a cause of homelessness. Like….?

This might be a crazy idea but if no one wants to build a shelter for the homeless near where they live why not build one in the financial district? no ones lives there and with the Work From Home model there is a ton of empty office space. Plus maybe it would mean they would be close to potential jobs and other things.

I’m not against helping the homeless, but i think this should be done in an area where you’ll find a lot more homeless people. Location is horrible. It’s really not that accessible near a train station or anything.

They shouldn’t only be proposing housing, but also other systems in place such as mental health work, doctor visits, social workers. Housing is just a first step, this can’t be a place where they dump them all.

My question is, what kinds of background checks do they do? Will it include criminal checks as well? Will Pine Street Inn provide or work with other organizations to provide services for these folks to help them transition to other affordable housing? And I doubt that anyone wants BPD to be just hanging around without good reason, but will BPD be adding more patrols to this area to minimize possible crime?

I think it is a solution to the homeless issue, even if there are a lot of legit concerns or more efforts needed. Besides, it seems like a lot of hotels have opened in Boston for whatever reason in the last year or so. If this hotel is not being used, might as well put it to good use.

Also guns are a way bigger threat to children and yet where is this level of passion for any measure of gun reform???????

Building this is a monument to the dealers that bring the drugs into our state. A publicly funded building so some asshole can get blown on a yacht…

I want the money to go into finding out who, what, when, where and why is importing the shit right into downtown Boston.

I’m sure the housing works, so would publicly caning the distributers. I don’t blame the users, but who the hell is able to allow this to just happen?

No one’s going to agree with me and it’s never going to happen but hear me out…

Obviously people don’t want this in their neighborhood. No one in their right might would want this next door.

These people are sick but they’re also breaking numerous laws. What if we completely reform our prison system to provides treatment and job training. Rewarding/incentivizing individuals facing drug addiction isn’t solving this issue.

When multiple vulnerable people are housed in one location it makes it easier and more convenient for the criminals who try to prey on them.

Sell this property and use the funds to purchase 1 bedroom condos in separate locations in real community neighborhoods

This property is in the middle of a commercial zone. Those that need homes deserve a better connection to a real community.

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“Transitional “ housing . Average age 57 , average stay 27 years. Yes very transitional. Make it housing with at least 33% low income . Move community builders and there money making system to Braintree abandoned motel 6.

Why did Ayana Pressley's felon husband get the contract to "clean up" mass and cass? Hmmmm....

Maybe Martha’s Vineyard?

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Massachusetts is going to set up concentration camps for homeless people within a decade, given the current political trajectory. They won't have that name but they'll serve the same function.

Yeah no thanks. Set them up somewhere far away from civilization.