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Long Island a 'big piece' of how Boston plans to fight opioid crisis

The Patriot Ledger - 1/5/2022

BOSTON — All options are on the table when it comes to how the city of Boston may use Long Island and its campus of buildings to help fight drug use, mental health issues and homelessness, city officials said Tuesday.

After a visit to the island, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city is in the early stages of figuring how to best use the island that once housed a homeless shelter and drug treatment facility. The buildings remain, but the residents were evacuated in 2014 when a bridge to the island, accessed through Quincy, was deemed unsafe and later demolished.

"We are working very quickly on the urgent crisis at Mass. and Cass ...we are already evaluating medium and long term options. Long Island is one big piece of that," Wu said during a press conference.

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Wu previously announced that the city of Boston would clear a tent encampment around the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as "Mass and Cass," by Jan. 12, but did not say where people living on the street would go. As the city grapples with homelessness, Long Island has been seen as part of a possible solution.

The only way to get to the island right now is by ferry, and Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch wants it to stay that way. The city of Quincy has spent more than $500,000 on litigation in a protracted legal battle over the bridge and Koch has vehemently opposed rebuilding the bridge since it was first brought up by former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.

Koch and residents of Squantum, where the bridge is accessed from the mainland, have said rebuilding the bridge would place an undue traffic burden on the neighborhood and force a Boston problem into Quincy city limits.

Quincy sued both state Department of Environmental Protection and Boston's public works department after a decision said the city had no standing to object to the bridge. A judge dismissed Quincy's lawsuit last week, but the city is also suing the state over a Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act review and has other pending litigation against the bridge.

"We'll continue fighting it in court," said Chris Walker, Koch's chief of staff, on Tuesday.

Wu, who took office in November, said she had not spoken to Koch about Long Island.

Wu said many of the buildings on the island, more than a century old, are "quite dilapidated" and would need work to fix. Boston spends about $1.3 million per year on the upkeep of buildings on the island.

Koch has said Long Island should be accessed by ferry service and Quincy city councilors passed a resolution asking the city to split the cost of a ferry if it would keep the bridge from being built.

Previous studies by Boston's public facilities department have called ferry service infeasible because of possible issues, like emergency medical and fire evacuation, but Wu said she isn't ruling it out completely.

"We need to be thinking about every possible way that we can connect our residents to services," Wu said. "There are many different populations of residents we could be serving as well. So to serve residents who have acute medical needs would require a different intensity of medical triage, even in the transportation to and from the island."

More: The opioid and homelessness crisis at Mass. and Cass: Whose problem is it?

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In response to a question about previous studies, Wu said her administration is bringing a fresh set of eyes to the problem. Senior Advisor Dr. Monica Bharel and Boston Public Health Commission Executive Director Dr. Bisola Ojikutu were among officials that accompanied Wu on a trip to the island Tuesday, which was closed to the press.

"I think all options are on the table. So as we look at those we are planning very carefully what the medium-term could be, which of those buildings could possibly be renovated sooner versus later, looking at the outdoor space," said Ojikutu. "We're really looking intensely at what we could do for the entire city of Boston in terms of addressing the issues of substance use, mental health and homelessness."

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Joe Difazio can be reached at jdifazio@patriotledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @jldifazio.

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