“Don’t Call it a Sweep”

situation

Michelle Wu and Boston’s police department violently crushed the encampment of the most destitute residents of Boston, located on Atkinson Street by Mass Ave and Melnea Cass Boulevard. The encampment has been a political football. Every politician only wants to use the people living there as a prop to disprove their enemies’ understanding of the world. Nobody with power wants to actually solve the problem. It has been violently crushed several times in the past, most notably in 2019 with Operation Clean Sweep, where the Boston police, led by the famous Pepper Spray addicted captain, John Danilecki, crushed Boston’s most impoverished residents’ personal effects and wheelchairs in a garbage truck. With this latest iteration of Operation Clean Sweep Wu is taking a publicly compassionate tact that will have the same violent effect as previous sweeps.

The mayor’s “Don’t Call It A Sweep” Sweep Justification Squad claimed that the city successfully provided housing for the people at Mass & Cass. This housing does not exist. There is actually less emergency housing available now, than at the start of the year.

If homeless people are to obtain a bed in a Boston shelter they need to get back to the shelter by soon after noon. Otherwise, the beds will be taken, they will have to sleep on a chair, a bench or the floor. The reality is in Boston now (even before the sweep) all the homeless shelters are filled to fire code capacity every night already, as of September. Boston’s poorest residents are stacked in like cordwood. The situation always gets worse during the winter. Shelters will not admit this but simply to fulfill need people need to be packed in past what the fire code thinks is safe. Shelter space is extremely limited and not increasing to match the increased need.

Forty years ago Massachusetts passed a law that requires emergency housing be available, but recent right wing gubernatorial administrations Baker and Healey (as well as their allies in the legislature), have strip mined and destroyed the funding for what little emergency housing exists, even as we have entered the most acute housing crisis in decades. The affordable housing list in Boston has a 14 year wait for people without an acute immediate emergency need, and there is not by a long shot sufficient emergency housing to provide for those in acute immediate emergency need.

Michelle Wu’s Operation Clean Sweep ordinance is written in such a way as to avoid running afoul of a ninth circuit court decision that states that banning camping on public grounds and putting these people in jail is a violation of the United States Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The ordinance to be implemented requires emergency housing be offered to people the police displace. To put a finer point on it: that housing does not exist. Michelle Wu moved forward with Operation Clean Sweep anyway.

Michelle Wu is continuing the same old policies which have failed multiple times with a new Housing First veneer. When you sweep an encampment at best you force the people that make it up to move. For a while. Then, as soon as the pressure is off, they move back. This has happened multiple times at Mass & Cass already. That is the reality of what Michelle Wu’s latest attempt at Operation Clean Sweep will be. There is a method to solve these crises of homelessness, but the political leaders of America are unwilling to countenance it (other than very rare exceptions): provide these people with housing. People with safe housing are under less stress. Out of all the options; violently crushing these people, press ganging them into addiction recovery programs by force, or providing them safe housing, the Housing First model has the best results. Proportionally more people given housing will stabilize their living situation, and, more of them will go through addiction recovery programs.

Michelle Wu wants to look progressive, so she is shrouding herself in the language of Housing First, but again: that housing does not exist.

The Atkinson Street encampment is a black mark that illustrates that Michelle Wu’s progressive appearance is nothing but artifice. They are the most abused residents of Boston. Michelle Wu is doing everything she can to dispose of the people at Mass & Cass. She violently crushed the encampment, compounded sickness, harm, and trauma for residents there, care providers, and everyone impacted by the displacement, but even so – she will fail. These people will not vanish, and no thuggish half measures will remove them permanently.