Residents across Boston say they are seeing more people in crisis and new levels of drug paraphernalia and human waste.
About a year after the Wu administration implemented a plan that cleared a major tent encampment near the area known as Mass. and Cass, some Boston residents and officials are saying that one problem was replaced by another.
There was a common refrain during a City Council hearing Tuesday: that the city’s crackdown on the Atkinson Street encampment forced those struggling with substance use disorder and homelessness into other areas of Boston, causing a variety of public safety and quality-of-life issues.
A decade ago, the city’s Long Island recovery campus closed. Since then, the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard became the epicenter of the region’s housing affordability, mental health, and substance abuse crises. The city’s tent-removal plan last year was spurred by a spike in safety concerns on Atkinson Street, where an open-air drug market had formed…