By Art Davies

Faith Leaders for Housing Justice (FL4HJ) came together in September 2021 in response to the injustice that people experiencing homelessness were facing in the encampment that was built up in the Newmarket Business District, the epicenter of services for individuals experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance abuse disorder (addiction) and people suffering mental illness. This area is also known as Mass and Cass, the methadone mile and the miracle mile.

The Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), Shelter Division, runs two shelters in the area; Woods Mullen Women’s Shelter and the Southampton Men’s Shelter. Both are emergency shelters serving adult individuals. BPHC Recovery Division runs recovery programs, street outreach and the Engagement Center (now closed and operating as a shelter for migrant families). BPHC Recovery works in concert with programs run by Boston Medical Center (BMC), and community health agencies such as Whittier, Eliot, Victory Programs and others. Boston Health Care for the Homeless (BHCH) also serves the community from their facility at Albany Street providing walk-in services, medical stays/treatment as well as outreach and relationships with “rough sleepers” who do not tend to come in for services or shelter.

Art Davies, one of the initial organizers of FL4HJ, has been involved with the Soup to Go ministry at the United Church of Christ in Medfield for over 20 years and has been organizing the preparation of and serving lunch at the BPHC shelters since 2010. In September 2021 he and his team came away from the Southampton shelter, through the encampment, feeling like something had to be done to help these people. The encampment was dirty with all sorts of makeshift shelter, no bathrooms, rampant drug use and no feeling of safety. The initial thought was to petition the city to rebuild the bridge to Long Island which provided access to the now closed (since 2014) central facility for BPHC shelter and recovery programs. Knowing that the city was unlikely to act on a petition from a small church in Medfield, Art reached out to Rev. Taylor at Old South Church in Boston and to Rev Brian Gearin at the Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston to see if the coalition that formed in response to the closing of the Long Island Bridge might be reformed to respond to the current crisis. Rev. Taylor connected Art to Rev June Cooper, Theologian in the City at Old South (retired Executive Director at Boston City Mission Society), one of the leaders of the Boston Warm coalition that formed when the LI Bridge was condemned in 2014.

Initially we reached out to area faith leaders, many of whom responded in 2014 for Boston Warm and gathered together for several Listen and Learn sessions hearing from people with lived experience in the community, working at the shelters and providing outreach services and faith leaders with ministries serving the community. We heard how hard everything is for this community. Conditions had been snowballing since the bridge was condemned and torn down; shelter conditions were cramped with many stories of harassment, abuse, stealing etc. that keep people from coming inside. As well as the loss of support services for drug and mental health treatment since Long Island Closed and especially during Covid when everything except the shelters closed down.

In the spring of 2022 we felt that we needed to be active in the community to get a better understanding and discern what we might actually be able to do to impact the undignified conditions continuing in the community around Mass and Cass. Even since January when the city reduced the encampment to a relatively small area on Atkins Street adjacent to the Engagement Center the conditions had not really changed and may have in fact become worse as open drug use was tolerated and many from outside the community were coming in to deal, buy or use drugs and prey on those addicted.

We began trying to get activities going during the day in the shelters, getting to know people (and them getting to know us) and giving them something to do inside that might keep them from wandering into trouble in the encampments. We have had some success but this has been difficult to really gain a foothold. Sara Mitchell has been championing this effort and has now established an evening group at the men’s shelter and a Thursday morning group at the women’s shelter. She sometimes organizes activities around a game or craft and sometimes around a Bible story. This winter Sara has started an every other month outing – the first of which in 2024 took the group to the Boston Aquarium.