It was bad enough that the city’s homeless shelter on Long Island was shuttered on several hours notice, with 450 beds suddenly yanked from the city inventory of places for those with no place to call home.
The task of replacing those beds with either temporary or permanent shelter housing elsewhere is exposing an inconvenient truth, one all the more glaring at this season of giving and help for those less fortunate: No one wants these people.
Sunday’s Globe featured a 2,700-word takeout on the years worth of neglect by city officials, who did “little beyond patchwork fixes” as the bridge crumbled to a dire state of danger. As outrageous as that chronic neglect may be, what has followed the bridge closure has been equally jarring.
Talk of relocating 200 shelter beds to the former Radius Hospital in Roxbury was scrapped in the face of neighborhood opposition. Then the city said it was also abandoning talk of building temporary shelter space on city-owned land on Frontage Road in the South End. One South End neighborhood leader told the Globe the neighborhood is becoming a “dumping ground for Boston’s homeless.”
Roxbury residents, too, said they weren’t interested in being the solution to the shelter problem. Even the neighborhood’s uber liberal state senator, Sonia Chang-Diaz, got in on the action, saying the proposed site was “too close to schools and playground.”
It’s hard to blame Roxbury residents, who rightly recognize that such a facility is not going to land anytime soon in Beacon Hill or the Back Bay, or in leafy West Roxbury or the high-end side of Jamaica Plain. But it also begins to make the city’s homeless population seem less like fellow humans who have fallen on hard times and more like the barge loaded with 3,000 tons of garbage that famously spent five months at sea in 1987 after being turned away by six states and three countries.
The Walsh administration now says it has a new site in mind, which it will announce later this week. City officials are keeping the location under wraps for now, though.
It’s hard to blame them.
—MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
The Globe reports that Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration opposed a move in March to move more state workers into a government employees’ union, but then proposed a similar transfer of 500 state workers in October. Meanwhile, the governor outlines his achievements for the MetroWest Daily News. Herald columnist Kimberly Atkins suggests a gig for Patrick, once his stint as governor is over: civil rights leader.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
A Globe editorial says the Affordable Care Act and a state measure approved in 2011 have, in combination, helped Boston save $45 million in municipal health care costs.
Brockton fire officials and operators of a sober house in the city are battling over an order by the fire department for the installation of sprinklers, which the operators say is a violation of the federal fair housing standards that protect disabled people.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky calls Elizabeth Warren the most powerful Democrat in America. Paul Krugman is obviously on Team Warren: “The Masters of the Universe, it turns out, are a bunch of whiners. But they’re whiners with war chests, and now they’ve bought themselves a Congress.”
Don’t tell Dick Cheney torture doesn’t work.
ELECTIONS
The Herald News comes out in favor of recalling Fall River Mayor Will Flanagan and endorses Bristol District Attorney Sam Sutter as his replacement in Tuesday’s election. The Globe catches up with the Fall River follies.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A Pew Research Center study shows the income inequality gap has widened along racial lines, with white households having a net worth 13 times greater than black households and 10 times greater than Hispanic.
Federal officials have granted a one-month delay for the ban on lobster and pot fishing that was set to go into effect January 1 to allow lobstermen to fish through the holidays, when the shellfish are in high demand and the price is high.
Internet punching bag Ben Edelman has a point, writes Nathan Robinson in The New Republic.
Labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, recently seen suing the Upper Crust pizza chain for withholding wages from immigrant workers, launches a class-action lawsuit against the taxi competitor Uber over the company’s classification of its drivers as independent contractors.
EDUCATION
Outside partners brought in to turn around struggling schools have failed to boost scores at seven schools across the state.
Lynn schools, teachers, and nonprofits distribute 43,000 books to children, the Item reports.
HEALTH CARE
Partners HealthCare blames state regulators for its first operating loss in 15 years, CommonWealth reports. Meanwhile, 1199 SEIU runs a full-page ad in the Boston Globe accusing Partners of nickel and diming Lynn residents and health care workers while sitting on reserves of $7.5 billion.
A contract dispute between Tufts Health Plan and two Worcester hospitals breaks into the open, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Trying to combat child obesity, a nonprofit bike shop in Lawrence repairs and rehabs bikes in a bid to get more kids on the road, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Worcester negotiates a new contract with the company that burns its trash that could save the city $240,000 a year, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Salem and Footprint Power, which is building a natural gas power plant on the city’s waterfront,reach a long-term tax deal that will net the city at least $4.75 million a year for 16 years. The amount equals what the coal power plant that used to occupy the waterfront site used to pay, the Salem News reports.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Black Lives Matter protests come to Brookline and Arlington. Earlier this month, CommonWealth’sGabrielle Gurley talked to Under the Radar’s Callie Crossley about the Boston protests.The Rev. Eugene Rivers joins Keller@Large to talk about community policing and says Boston has one of the better departments in the country and could teach other cities how to implement the approach.
The MetroWest Daily News recalls the death of Eurie Stamps, an unarmed black man killed by a white police officer in his Framingham home while watching a Celtics game,
MEDIA
Bill Cosby tells the New York Post’s Page Six column that the black media should remain neutral in covering allegations of rape and sexual abuse against him.
Sony wants The New York Times and others to stop publishing information that hackers obtained from the company’s computers.
