Outdoor drug use is on the rise amid neighborhood revitalization efforts

At a community safety meeting earlier this month, hair salon owner Pamela Leins described harassment, catcalls and occasional fights that left her feeling uneasy and scaring away customers.

“It’s getting worse and worse,” said Leins, who opened her business a year and a half ago. “My two sons come into the store every day and see it. Unfortunately, it has become normalized.”

Boston’s addiction and cost of living crisis has reached every corner of the city, particularly when public health officials and social workers dismantled and decentralized the large encampments at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard a year ago. On the Boston Common, the rise in public drug use has made neighbors and tourists feel less safe, representatives from civic and business groups said at a City Council hearing last week. At a hearing in October, some residents expressed similar concerns about Andrew Square in South Boston.

Nubian Square has long been home to a homeless population. But there is now an increase in outdoor drug sales and an accompanying increase in opioid overdoses, according to police and public health officials. The change comes at a pivotal time for the neighborhood, as city officials and private developers have joined forces to lay out big plans for investment in an underfunded area known as the heart of Boston’s black community.

“It’s really having a negative impact on the way we function and thrive in Nubian Square,” said Robert George, executive director of the small business advocacy nonprofit Roxbury Main Streets. “We hear from the owners in day-to-day operations that they say, ‘I don’t know how long we can keep this up.'”

On a recent afternoon, a few people carrying shopping bags or pushing shopping carts crowded onto Washington Street west of the square’s bus station, bracing themselves against the biting November wind. They said they lived on the streets but did not want to be interviewed.

George described the increase in homelessness and drug use as “spillover from the methadone mile,” a derogatory term used to describe the Mass. area. and Cass, where there is a dense concentration of substance abuse treatment programs, including methadone clinics.

He and others called for additional housing and addiction services at Nubian Square to help those in need, saying the same concentration of services the city offers in Mass. and Cass should be repeated elsewhere, and that business owners trying to revitalize the area also deserve support.

Kelly Young, director of the city’s Coordinated Response Team to address the crisis near Mass. and Cass, said outreach workers from her team visit neighborhoods like Nubian Square and Grove Hall five nights a week. She said Mayor Michelle Wu has tasked her team with preventing mass drug use among the public and the police are providing the necessary deterrence.

“Law enforcement will help us provide necessary care and increase the likelihood that a person will participate in a treatment plan, along with services without penalties,” Young said.

The Crisis at Mass. and Cass can be traced back to the closure of the Long Island Bridge in 2014, which blocked access to housing and addiction services on the island. People struggling with homelessness and substance use disorders gathered and slept near the intersection, which is also home to a men’s homeless shelter. The city expanded its services, attracting more people to the area. Dealers also turned the area into a public drug market. As conditions there returned to normal, people set up camps that the city repeatedly tried to close, culminating in a large-scale eviction in October 2023.

On an afternoon in late October, Abdul Adil sat on a folding chair next to the sales tent he has operated since 2020 near the Nubian Square transit terminal. Speaker systems and handbags were piled on a long table; Dresses and skirts hung on the tent struts. Adil said he has noticed an increase in crowds nearby since the city cleared the encampments.

“If they are within Mass. and Cass put pressure on them, they flock here,” he said. “Many people don’t get the help they need.”

The city administration has noted the concerns. The Boston City Council held a hearing on the crisis at Mass and Cass in October, and both public health and police officials testified that they recognized the situation at Nubian Square was getting worse.

Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, who represents Roxbury, called for greater coordination and funding to provide much-needed services.

“At this point it has spread to our neighborhood, Nubian Square and all parts of Roxbury,” she said.

Bisola Ojikutu, the city’s public health commissioner, said Nubian Square has become a focus of Boston’s outreach programs as city officials recognize that open-air drug trafficking is spreading from Mass. and expanded Cass to other parts of the city.

“We know it has become an area of ​​concern as more and more people live with a substance use disorder,” Ojikutu said at the hearing. “Substance use disorder and open drug use.”

She pointed to the work of the Nubian Square Task Force, which brings together the Health Commission and more than two dozen health organizations, advocacy groups, businesses and nonprofits to coordinate efforts to help the growing number of people in need of housing, health care and recovery Neighborhood services.

One of those nonprofits is Torchlight Recovery, which works locally in Roxbury to provide homeless people with housing and medical resources. Minister Randy Muhammad, executive director of Torchlight, said Nubian Square had long struggled with homelessness in the area, but the people living on the street were largely known to residents and business owners in the neighborhood.

“But we are seeing a new crowd,” Muhammad said.

Overdoses in the blocks surrounding Nubian Square rose in late 2023, according to a Globe analysis of police operations in the area over the past five years. There were 32 overdose calls in the last half of the year, compared to 22 during the same period in 2022 and 12 in 2021. This year, there were 14 overdose calls from July to mid-October.

The consequences of the releases at Mass. and Cass are no surprise, Assistant Superintendent Dan Humphreys told the council in October.

“One of our concerns right away was, ‘Will this cause people to be displaced into surrounding areas?'” Humphreys said.

The department has increased patrols in the Mass. corridor. and Cass reinforced to Nubian Square, he said.

Dan Glaun can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @dglaun.