pelican_chorus t1_j0vlvxs wrote on December 19, 2022 at 7:22 PM

Reply to comment by TheyMikeBeGiants in Proposed permanent housing building for those experiencing homelessness raises concerns with some Dorchester residents by ak47workaccnt

Amen. People here complaining about NIBYs with regards to this are ridiculous: Roxbury and Dorchester are the poor neighborhoods where these kinds of projects are always placed.

Build more of this in my backyard, in Cambridge. Or in an affluent part of Boston, or Brookline, or wherever.

TheyMikeBeGiants t1_j0vx9qy wrote on December 19, 2022 at 8:37 PM

Fuckin amen. Build them in Somerville and Charlestown and Beacon Hill. Build ALL of them in Brookline. Build them in West Roxbury too, and in Milton and Westwood and EVERYWHERE along the Cape.

Build affordable housing everywhere rich assholes near what is ostensibly a metropolitan center claim that their backyard deserves protection instead of people on the street.

TheTr7nity t1_j0y4o9g wrote on December 20, 2022 at 7:19 AM

Why Somerville? The homeless population is pretty low in Somerville. Why not build it where there are a lot of homeless, like Dorchester… where it can be easily accessible?

TheyMikeBeGiants t1_j0zsiuu wrote on December 20, 2022 at 5:08 PM

Accessible to what? The alleys they used to sleep in before they got housed? So long as anybody can afford the T - which is easier to get than not once you're housed, given that subsidized housing takes a percentage of your income instead of as much as they can get at market rate - then it doesn't matter where they are inside the Greater Boston Area.

For what it's worth, we're already at where you are suggesting. They already build public housing out in Dorchester, a hugely disproportionate amount. That's where the least resistance is, because nobody out there has the money to fight it. Boston's solution to homelessness and addiction is to put all of them in one place, away from all the tourists who take photos, and that's how and why we end up with situations like Mass & Cass.

If we're gonna talk about why the housing crisis is so fucking terrible here, it's because the most politically expedient solution has always been "Well we'll put another bandaid in Dorchester and that'll keep my poll numbers up". It's been that way for longer than I've been alive and it'll be that way until we're both dead unless something changes. We gotta build everywhere else and it can't just be yet more lab space.