BOSTON (WHDH) - The City of Boston’s new Family and Friends protocol is aiming to get people in touch with loved ones who might be living on the street at Mass. Avenue and & Melnea Cass Boulevard as officials clear out encampments from the area again on Monday.
The program connects people living in the homeless encampment with loved ones – only if both parties consent – and is geared toward getting them the help they need.
This is the city’s first effort of 2023 to clear out the troubled area of Mass and Cass, which has become a spotlight for homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues in the city.
“We are concerned with violence, with weapons, also with unsanitary debris that sometimes breeds rodents and different public health concerns that happen because of that physical tent structure,” said Coordinated Response Team Director Tania Del Rio.
In 2021, former Mayor Kim Janey declared a public health crisis because of those concerns and issued an executive order banning tents on public property.
In 2022, the city pulled down and cleaned up the encampments twice and tried to transition people living there to shelters, addiction support, and low threshold housing. But as the months ticked by, people have continued to set up camp.
This latest cleanup comes as the city’s Coordinated Response Team rolls out a new resource. Under the Family and Friends protocol, people can now formally file a request to be put in touch with a loved one who may be living on the streets without access to phone or internet.
City officials say the program gives people hope.
“When people have a supportive social network, a supportive environment somewhere that is willing to support that journey into recovery, they’re often more successful,” Del Rio said. “So we want to facilitate as many of those connections as we can.
Del Rio said what they have found through trying to facilitate these connections is that even if a person doesn’t consent right away to be connected to that family member or friend, they are telling officials that it helps them to know that someone does care and the city is seeing some people eventually reconnect down the line.
For more information on this new program, click here or call 617-982-4785.
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