Check this out! Boston learns a lesson in how not to do it!

Unfortunate results of tearing down the homeless tents

Like other cities, Boston has learned that by clearing tents and people out of their city parks in the winter leads to an obvious outcome:

Counselors lose contact with their clients!

In other words, when you displace people who are facing the challenges of homelessness or addiction or poverty, it is hard to find them to keep helping them. They go sleep wherever they can, their loss of property and important paperwork makes them harder to serve, and the depression and fear coming from having their personal items thrown in the garbage means they sink further down into the maelstrom of addiction and mental illness and sense of hopelessness.

When you cannot reach your clients, you cannot remind them of important medical appointments and tests. You cannot help them get recertified for SNAP (LINK) cards or re-apply for Medicare and Medicaid. You cannot put them in touch with their family members who are trying to help them. Cannot help them find job-training classes and opportunities for volunteering—sometimes the very first helpful step to getting back on the road to establishing records so that the clients can find a job and a place to live.

This list goes on forever. Disrupting people’s lives is a terrible way to bring about change—change some of the homeless persons may not even want a part of, or at least not yet.

Destroying a homeless encampment is a huge step backwards in solving the problem. It is a huge step backwards in getting these persons the help they desperately need.

Note that area businesses wanted the homeless out. Note that there is also the problem of rampant addiction in that community that was targeted and destroyed.

Treating the disenfranchised as less than human brings about predictable results. Is it not amazing that with Boston College, Boston University, Smith, and Harvard and many other informed university faculty members in psychology and social work and sociology that the destruction of a community could happen?

This destruction of a neighborhood is a challenge to those social service persons to get out into the streets and help.

Here is the article from March, 2025.Yes, some follow-ups by both the media and counselors would be a good idea. Some excursions into that neighborhood would seem to be a great idea. Read more here:https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-03-06/after-mass-and-cass-crackdown-homeless-community-cast-out-into-the-shadows-of-boston