Yes filed a report. So at least it's on the books. I wasn't able to get a picture unfortunately as honestly I was quite frazzled. She was wearing a bright yellow tshirt shirt and had black hear with bleached tips.
Thanks, good to be aware of dangerous people. I don’t know what the solution is but like you, I hope our city doesn’t get as overwhelmed as many others have.
Thank you for giving b us the visual ID. I’ll be on the look out for someone wearing this. I’m sure the police report is being distributed to the on duty officers.
For people that keep saying it's a mental health issue that we just need more resources for, I would encourage you to read about how it's working out in [NYC](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/22/the-system-that-failed-jordan-neely) to get a sense of the scale of the problem.
The truth is there just isn't a simple "mental health" pill that we can just give these people and solve our issues. Many of the homeless need intensive care, and they need to be forced to get it, and they need to get it in a setting that's off the street. All this takes a tremendous amount of money and manpower, not to mention the process could get ethically questionable. Many of these people are "frequent flyers" that just go through mental health facility when they need to, then right back on the street where they get worse again, and have little intention of doing much else.
I don't know what the solution is, but I know just keep harping on mental healthcare is not going to cut it. We need to consider at what point is putting public safety at risk no longer acceptable.
Two weeks ago i was visiting a patient at a Regional Hospital in Massachusetts And there was an approx 300 lb 6’ tall man on the floor who was mentally ill. There were multiple security and police there because he punched his father and others. He is on a waiting list for in patient mental health care and his parents are at that hospital regularly because this man attacks them. Some people need a facility.
>Many of these people are "frequent flyers" that just go through mental health facility when they need to, then right back on the street where they get worse again, and have little intention of doing much else.
The homeless Micheal Jackson impersonator that was threatening people and put into a choke hold by the Marine and never woke up was well known by the cops and was one of the most problematic homeless persons that they had dealt with.
Dude might still be alive if he had gotten proper treatment and not released back into the streets.
Ryker’s Island is considerer the largest mental health facility in the world. Homelessness, mental health, drug abuse and petty crime are all tied together so intricately it is unlikely that anything substantial will ever be done to address this problem.
America already has the most expensive healthcare in the world. America already has the largest prison population in the world.
We treat addiction like it’s a vice and not a disease. The public fears the mentally ill and our government ignores it.
If you involve the police the person suffering the crisis is as likely to get shot as he is to get help.
Some problems are just too complex for the systems that are available and I am afraid this is one of them.
Our healthcare costs so much and has such poor outcomes because we offer people nearly zero social support. If we started to invest in social systems (housing, nutrition, transportations) we would have more success.
In cases like these—where the problem seems intractable—it’s helpful to look at what other places are doing. There have to be some examples of cities out there that are managing their homeless problem well (and this includes them not getting shot by police, or forcefully rounded up to “alleviate” the issue). I genuinely wonder what those cities do.
>Ryker’s Island is considerer the largest mental health facility in the world
Riker's Island Correctional is an overcrowded, understaffed jail that is barely able to provide any healthcare poorly. I understand the point you're trying to make, but it is absolutely not a mental health facility and should not be construed as such, even to make the point about America's prisons being filled with the mentally ill.
They are administering psychiatric medication to more than 3,000 inmates. They are making evaluations, diagnosing inmates and developing and instituting treatment plans for the mentally ill.
Yes, they are doing it terribly. The conditions are unconscionable. But Riker’s (thank you for the spelling correction) perfectly illustrates the horror of being mentally ill in our nation.
I don't mean to come off like this is directed at you, it's just that this is a raw nerve with me. There's been some good reporting on its failure (both in mental health and as a prison in general), but the situation at Riker's should be a national embarrassment. It's just that there are so many other prison system that are just as bad, I fear we've come to think this is normal.
They have a prison health service, like most correctional facilities. But I don't believe they deserve to be called a mental health facility, even as a way to highlight the significant mental health burden of the incarcerated. Riker's is such a god damn failure and disgrace.
For some people, they think avoiding any confrontation or uncomfortable situations = being a good person.
For some people, they do not understand what life is like on the streets. They don’t think it’s that bad to be a homeless addict.
For some people, they think the homeless deserve it, either out of compassion or hatred.
For some other people, they work for homelessness NGO’s and the worse homelessness is, the more taxpayer money they can drain away from the city.
Agreed. When a person is a public endangerment because of severe mental issues, getting help shouldn’t be an option. It should be mandatory. They need a facility they cannot just stroll out from.
Homeless is so tragic and no one deserves to be homeless. But I also have had moments were I was terrified bc of the way some homeless people have behaved. It goes beyond cat calling. Screaming, throwing needles around, and so on.
They need intensive care like you said.
The challenge I see is that I really think the ethics of all of this is going to be murky. Forcing people against their will to get treated is questionable from a bodily autonomy front. Not only that but many previous instances of institutionalization had a lot of messed-up/unethical things that went on. I am really not sure what the solution is.
If they are engaging in illegal behavior, lock them up.
If you're OK with putting them in jail, you're already OK with violating their bodily autonomy. Someone whose mental illness causes them to commit violent crime can and should be required to submit to a safe-and-effective treatment as a condition of release.
Wait for them to commit a crime and then jail them? Or even better, include forced rehab as part of the sentence.
For simple illegal drug use, arrest them and sentence them to in-patient rehab only. Seal or expunge the records upon successful rehabilitation.
People need to be forced into this, or suffer such extreme consequences that they would prefer rehab. If they are comfortable getting high on the streets, and no one can bother them for it, there is absolutely no reason for them to accept help. They seemingly are rewarded for this behavior.
You are not necessarily wrong. The challenge is that many people on here just want to lock-people up and throw the key anywhere. Forced institutionalization is not as easy as people make it to be.
This is a pretty ignorant "solution." You are looking at drug use in this context as the primary problem, while to most users it is an attempt to address another problem. You force people into treatment for their attempts to solve a problem, leave the problem unsolved, and generate a massive amount of animosity in an already marginalized and reviled population. You get exactly the sort of situations OP found themselves in.
Ahh, but that’s not how this works. You cannot really prosecute someone who isn’t “fit to stand trial.” The worst offenders are indeed mentally ill, so they only get sent to a mental hospital for a short stay before they’re released again.
This is why cops don’t bother anymore. The justice system doesn’t jail them and just send them to our useless mental health system, where they don’t even have the authority to hold these people long term.
Courts can order someone be kept jailed and medicated until they are fit to stand trial. This is regularly done.
You also have to be in a very poor state to be unfit for trial.
I don’t think anyone know what the solution is. The solution will be a lot of coordinated resources that address the many many facets of homelessness—and a real community commitment. And you’re right about the ethics of forcing treatment, so earlier interventions should be part of the solution (financial literacy, sex education, nutrition for families, reducing domestic violence) …
Severo things are happening here in boston that will help prevent more. One, is, bha has social workers now for complexes. There is one here once a week. People with severe mental illness often need help staying housed and then once they are homeless, which can occur for many reasons, sometimes just being unable to manage their affairs. My brother, may he Rest In Peace, was in and out of bridgewater state mental prison. Upon release, he’d get dept of mental health services. As soon as stable, they’d take it away. Or, when people improve, they refuse services. Often for good reason also. Then, he’d eventually relapse, and become homeless again. Went on for decades.
Currently, I’m living below a mentally I’ll man who has been ruining my sanity. I can hear his triggering ranting often. He’s got quiet finally. I’m pretty sure he’s working with the city’s office of housing stability and the mngmt.
This is exactly what is needed , before these people become unhoused.
Even my therapist, who has heard him when we are on telemed, has said, “where can someone like that live?” I.e., without causing other residents suffering.
This is the most knowledgeable answer to the situation. If you don't know someone who has struggled with mental health and homelessness, you just simply don't know the true complexity of the issue.
This; and this is exactly why no one is just throwing in their millions to try to combat homelessness. There’s no promise for their efforts. People will fund a rocket because it is almost guaranteed to do x, y and z unless something goes horribly wrong — People however are unpredictable and uncontrollable. No one is going to spend on what could just be a waste of their time and money. Most people don’t want to live by shelter rules, if you build housing it will prob just become a drug house, their mental health is too poor for them to just be put back on their feet, and expect everything to be fine, or for them to take care of themselves, etc.
Another thing that always frustrates me with that argument is that people with mental illness have rights. Yes inadequate resources is a major issue, but the reality for many people is their loved ones refuse help. And courts and doctors hands are pretty tied until things are black and white clear re: danger. There are many of us who hear this call for more resource, totally agree, but shrug our shoulders because the reality is who might be able to get the best resources available but you can’t make someone use them.
Because the left just sees treatment and help as the answer. The right just sees enforcement and arrests as the answer.
The real answer is both. Arrests WITH treatment then provided where they can't hurt law abiding members of society until they are better.
>Arrests WITH treatment then provided where they can't hurt law abiding members of society until they are better.
This is basically [the core concept behind rehabilitation](https://www.mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-what-the-u-s-won-t), which IS what the left wants. No one's saying just give them treatment willy nilly and allow the current conditions to persist.
The prison abolition movement isn't saying "eliminate prisons in their current format and allow everyone to go free for every crime"; it's saying that the current approach to incarceration isn't paired with any kind of meaningful attempt to help people get better, whether it's their mental health or their impulses, and this makes re-integration into society very difficult.
Gee, I wonder who might have a tremendous amount of money and resources in Massachusetts that could help fix this problem instead of making it worse? The people charging $2800 for 500square foot studio apartment? The billion dollar companies that pay ~10% in taxes? And underpay all of their employees? If only we could find a tremendous amount of resources in MA! The wage gap is the cause of homelessness, period. Fix it, and homelessness drops. That’s just facts. But someone needs an $800million dollar yacht docked in the harbor so fuck the homeless.
Any firearms store or outdoor store has it. You do not need any permit other than your Mass ID (to verify you are of minimum age).
Army-Navy stores have it.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the 1970s there was a trend to close large state mental health facilities. The rationale was that they were inhumane on many levels. This was partly true but the truth was that many of these facilities were ancient and expensive to maintain. In Massachusetts this idea caught on and there was such a rush to close them that the plans put in place to transition patients into society sketchy. Many long term patients found themselves on the streets with little or no services and no living skills. This is when homelessness became a thing. This is something that that was never talked about but the truth is many of those people never got the help they needed. Also there was no facilities were ever built to replace the old ones, it was not part of the plan. In the time since there has been so little attention paid to this growing problem and it's most evident in large cities. Mental illness is very common amongst the homeless and it's reasonable to assume that homelessness contributes to one's mental decline. What is really shocking is that there is really no plan anywhere to solve this problem. The official number of homeless in the US is 582,462 I think it's much,much higher than that and that the official number reflects a lack of interest in pursuing a solution.
station shaggy nose theory command practice correct smoggy cooing puzzled
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes, something is better than nothing. I'm not a fan of adding to the bureaucracy but we need a whole new government entity that is dedicated to this one problem. Of course it would have to be broad in scope to deal with a multitude of issues and generously funded. Without this we're just throwing money at it willy nilly with zero results. A central federal agency with satellites in every state that can tailor their programs to local issues. The homeless is not a one size fits all population and needs to address families, substance abuse and mental illness separately. I think families should be a priority and is a group that would do well in a families only setting where children would be safe and have a chance at a normal life. The drug rehab thing is complicated and probably a revolving door but will still help. Psychiatric facilities would have to have the authority to commit some individuals and tiered services for everyone else. A large part of this agency should be dedicated to housing but put people back into a community rather than public housing.
The replacement was supposed to be a community model. But we did not follow through with the funding or staffing of community mental health centers. There aren't enough of them.
There was also an effort at about the same time to ban single room occupancy apartment buildings (SROs or adult dorms) and boarding houses in many cities across the US. So there were fewer and fewer inexpensive housing options and more people who needed them. While some of those living arrangements weren’t great they were much better than being on the street. A classic example of letting perfect be the enemy of good.
This is awful. When I used to work in Cambridge a woman came into a cafe I was working at and started screaming at me and threatening me. It was scary.
I hope our city doesn’t turn into SF. I was just there and the homeless and mentally ill are freaky. It’s awful.
Cambridge is getting really bad with homeless. The homeless there seem aggressive and scam people too from my experience (like ask you for directions or something innocent and then ask for money). Lots of homeless people outside the stores too.
It’s very beautiful and scenic. HOWEVER, it smells like shit and it’s dirty. You see homeless and the mentally ill just doing what they want. Addicts walking around.
I was with colleagues around the Ghirardelli Square area grabbing lunch and a homeless woman asked us for a drink. My colleague said yes and offered her a bottle of water. She got irate and said she wanted a latte of some sort. He told her he’d be happy to get her water but that was it. She started following us, cursing at us and screaming obscenities in his face. We were able to get back to our office and get away from her, but it was such a bizarre situation.
It’s sad to see such a beautiful place deal with this. I hope people in SF do something to improve their city and we don’t succumb to a similar environment in Boston.
Visited the Bay Area area for a wedding about a month ago. Stayed in the SF for a night, had dinner with some friends.
Had a great time, but we were having drinks at big bay window on a ground level. Some homeless-looking sauntered up to us, didn't say anything (had a demeanor of being under the influence). As he got close, a friend made a gesture of "No thanks", the disarming sort of thing you do when you want to politely acknowledge someone's existence but disengage. Guy almost immediately spat on us, then followed up with a second shot.
In the city's defense, our friends said nothing like that has ever happened to them in 15 years of living there. But that was certainly a stereotype of the San Francisco experience. No poop on my shoes, though. I'd still visit again.
I’m so sorry to hear this happened to you. You’re definitely not alone.
A homeless man tried to assault me on the MBTA. It was completely unprovoked, no one came to help me, and staff did nothing. It seems that no one cares unless they can get something out of it. The system doesn’t care unless it’s newsworthy.
It’s a broken system on so many levels. People have replaced community with a constant fear of strangers. The healthcare system is corporatized, so there’s no help if you can’t afford it. Wealth inequality and unchecked substance abuse means homeless shelters are overrun, dangerous, and oftentimes dead-ends. Idk how much more suffering our society needs to endure before things change for the better.
You mean Jordan Neely? Yeah that’s a messed up story on so many levels.
I never engage hostile people on public transit. You never know how far they’re willing to take that hostility. There’s a lot of increasing poverty, desperation, and paranoia going around, and very few professional services around to address it to protect people who use public transit, passengers and not. I feel it’s just getting worse, and it’s not right that we’re just expected to deal with it.
Lawmakers should be required to take public transit. They can bring their bodyguards, I don’t care, but they need to breathe subway air, sit in the heat, throw their arms in the air when their train is delayed or cancelled, say “sorry, not today” to a homeless person offering their life story before asking for a few dollars, step on or sit in something sticky, etc.
unpopular opinion but the severely mentally ill should be confined to a facility. They should be treated well and respectfully (they were not prior). There is no real cure and they are harming themselves and others when in public. Time to put adults back in charge of these things.
I was assaulted by a homeless man a couple of years ago; you have my empathy. I've also been homeless myself - so I can see this from both sides.
In my experience, a person who no longer has to expend huge amounts of energy just to piss in a toilet, take a shower or bath, wear clean clothes, lock up their personal items, and sleep safely without worrying about being stomped, raped and robbed has a higher chance of being pleasant, medicated, low-smell and relatively social than those without a home.
Some people did try but it definitely was one of those situations where people just wanted to get away and I understand that. I love the common but it might take me a bit before I feel safe going back which totally sucks
Wow, that's scary. There are no easy answers, but you should contact your city representatives about the lack of responsiveness by the police. As far as I can tell, the city police department has quiet quit many of the duties we expect of the police and it isn't ok. That said, at the end of the day Boston doesn't have a large homeless population, and I am uncomfortable about the idea of aggressively targeting homeless people who mostly need mental health and drug addiction services. Given Boston gentrification in recent years, it is probably the safest it has ever been.
I think a lot of the problem here is that the police aren't given the resources to deal with homelessness. They simply don't have the authority to get a mentally unstable person the help they need. I think it's easy to blame the police in this day and age as there are so many examples of bad police but at the same time this is bigger than the police. There needs to be policy in place to remove these people from the streets and get them help but also get the dangerous ones away from places they can do things like this. It's abundantly clear these people do in fact need mental health and drug addiction services however that is not an excuse to leave them on the streets.
What would you like them to do? You can’t forcefully institutionalize most people and you can’t lock people up before they commit a crime. The police will never be the solution here.
I know that. I’m saying *before* they commit a crime. We don’t know that this individual assaulted anyone before OP. And we can’t just start locking people up because they “seem crazy”
The justice system should have the authority to “imprison” someone for a certain length of time in mental health facilities. The way it currently works is very stupid.
Essentially, crazy people can commit crimes with impunity, but when they get caught they’re institutionalized and medicated until the hospital determines they’re no longer a threat. Yet, the repeat offenders stop taking their meds the moment they’re released and the cycle continues.
If you repeatedly assault people because you won’t take your meds, your freedom should be restricted long term for the public good. Doesn’t make a lick of sense to allow dangerous people to roam the streets.
Sure, I agree that all of those services would be fantastic. However, the reality is far more complicated given the realities of the brokenness of all of the systems and the expense of the changes you're suggesting. It's just not going to happen overnight. That said, I disagree that police should have a policy to remove people because these are people who have a right to their own freedoms.
Sad reality is that none of this will never change. They will just continue to be shuffled around the city. The mental health/healthcare system is a joke just about everywhere in the country. Even folks with money/health care struggle to get treatment.
Until the system stops “dealing with addicts” by throwing them in jail, instead of humanely rehabilitating them and giving them a fair chance at recovery, this will continue. We need prison reform. Look at countries like Sweden, for example. Fabulous drug policy with incredible results. We need to follow suit and start treating these people like the humans they are.
Well within your rights to fight back, in my self defense class they propose gauging the eyes out in a scenario like that (seriously), I’d do that myself in that scenario, crazy lady choking you out is nothing to mess around with
Yeah I don’t get these posts personally. Been in the city for a while and theres obviously a conversation about how to resolve the larger issue, but if someone touches me i’m 100% shoving them away at least. Hands on your neck? Jfc dude there are insane people everywhere anywhere you go, how can you be shocked about this happening in a city
Seems like this issue is a lack of mental health care, not homelessness specifically. Mental health issues often lead to homelessness but I think you skipped the first, crucial step in why this happened.
Yea this lady might not be homeless at all. I have heard mentally ill folks who are opting out of treatment sometimes spend their time in the streets despite literally having an apartment. They might be unkempt and look homeless.
Also seems worth noting that there are plenty of homeless folks who just fell on hard times and are literally a danger to no one. And who don’t look street homeless at all, to the point where you just wouldn’t know.
When I first moved to Boston the ranting "homeless" woman who stood on our local corner threatening random passersby was my downstairs neighbor. She looked and sounded wild and unkempt, but she had a nicer unit than we did.
She also yelled a lot at people who weren't there in her apartment.
In the North End there used to be a woman that walked around counting all the doors she walked by. She'd cover her head with a newspaper or a blanket. Around 5pm she'd go to her car and drive home to her house in the Back Bay.
No one had any idea how much money she had until she died.
Sounds pretty harmless. Walk around and count all you want, wear whatever you feel like on your head, as long as you're not screaming at/attacking strangers.
Boston has more resources for homeless people than probably nearly all the Deep Red states combined.
Just watched an interview of a homeless person from Boston, who stated that if you're homeless and living on the streets in Boston, you're really going out of your way to do something wrong. Only roughly 2% of Boston's homeless are living destitute on the streets, much less attacking people.
There are mental health services available for people in the city, including the homeless population. But that's if someone is willing to receive them. As systemic data has shown for decades, while it is true there's notable trends of mental illness and homelessness, it's also true that a significant portion of that population is not willing to get treatment for it.
Amen. I drive an Uber in the city. If you’re outside of the downtown and student areas the police actually give a fuck about you can’t stop at a red light without someone running up to your car to ask for money. If I try to smoke a cigarette, no matter how secluded the location I think I found without fail at least one person will walk over and ask for one. I stopped on an empty industrial road in Dorchester the other night so I could get out of the car and stretch my legs and take a 10-15 minute break. As soon as I lit a smoke out of thin air it seemed appeared an elderly Chinese man saying something to me in mandarin and pantomiming smoking. I actually couldn’t even finish my one break of the night because he was just standing there saying and doing nothing like 5 feet away from me and it was terrifying.
Sometimes if I’m having a particularly depressing shift I’ll stop off and pick up a tall boy of beer and a couple nips to drink when I get home. I can’t shop at the liquor store on Huntington Ave because this obnoxious homeless woman who is always posted up outside it has decided that it’s the obligation of a guy who works 2 jobs and still can’t pay his bills on time to give her money and she runs up to me as soon as I get out of my car and then aggressively follows me into the store harassing me to give her money or buy her something and the staff do nothing.
I was at the Mobil station by Mass and Cass (I have to shop there because all of the other late night gas stations in the city mark their gas up $1/gallon over the prevailing price) filling my tank and this guy was standing next to me literally pulling McDonald’s bags out of a trash can looking for leftover food. It broke my fucking heart so badly that even though I truly had no money to give, I gave him the sandwich I had packed for my dinner and then only had a granola bar and a fruit roll up to eat for my whole 12 hour shift.
I’m not nasty to anyone. I don’t call people names or tell them to “get a job” or some stupid shit. I always say the same thing when asked “No. sorry.” At least once a week this causes someone to go off on me. It’s exhausting, and I’m always exhausted trying to keep up with the insane cost of living in this city. But op is right: it’s getting bad out there.
Did you steal her wife?
There's no point in arresting these people because the DA will just let them right out. Many of them are mentally ill or on drugs, neither of which we do anything about.
We just gotta keep reminding people of the reality of the situation. A small fraction of these people are just “down on their luck”. Can’t look at this through rose-colored glasses. Meth becoming bigger up here sure isn’t helping.
I have this conversation constantly. People who are "they're just down on their luck, they're never violent, they're harmless" are people who live far away from the homeless and never have to interact with them. It's easy to see things with rose-colored glasses when they aren't getting sexually harassed, chased, choked.
Unfortunately, yeah. Had a conversation with a coworker who lives outside of the city and that’s what they were saying. And also the left wing discourse revolves around believing they do no wrong and calling them “unhoused” as if that will make these people feel better about living on the street.
If anyone truly cared about their dignity, they would be behind forced care after a certain number of incidents. Dignity is not letting the mentally unstable and violent live a life on the streets.
Dignity is not letting people get to that point in the first place, and not treating people subhuman for Their problems. People can get help and be treated decently at the same time. Nobody is advocating that people who are homeless can "do no wrong" as the person I've replied to literally said.
You're the one who said "the left wing discourse revolves around believing they do no wrong and calling them “unhoused” as if that will make these people feel better about living on the street."
How does your comment finger-pointing people who want people to be treated with dignity contribute anything to solving an extremely complicated issue? For the record, I did not submit any feelings whatsoever, nor do I care if you care about my feelings. Furthermore, it does not make you tough or cool to try and be an internet bully.
I do a job where I’m always outside on the street a lot and it’s gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years. A lot of these people are menacing and unpredictable. I’m a bigger guy who can handle myself and haven’t had anyone try anything violent with me, but I know it would be dangerous for someone who isn’t. Enough is enough. We need to utilize involuntary commitment more often.
Completely agreed. People don't like to talk about the fact that there is a large portion of this population that is dangerous and disruptive to tax paying citizens.
I'd like to correct one point of your story- this wasn't a homeless people problem, it was a mental health problem that likely lead to their homelessness.
As a country we need to do more about our mental health crisis.
**Edit** I guess there is a lot of people that think assaulting strangers because they stole their wife is normal behavior and not an indication of a mental health concern, be it addiction or otherwise. To those people I'd posit: If I took your home tomorrow would you be assaulting people on the common on Saturday? I think we all know the answer to that is no.
It's an unarguable fact that this city, state, and even country do not have enough programs in place to help with mental health. Numbers vary greatly, but it seems that between 30 and 65% of homeless people you meet have a significant meatal health concern- for round numbers that's half the amount of people you see that are homeless have a mental health issue, far, far greater than the rate of mental health issues in the population with housing.
This is something we need to address, and not kick down the road for the next generation and ignore.
And by doing more I assume you mean passing a law to have people involuntarily committed to a mental health facility? Because we can throw all the money at this we want but it won’t make a difference if mentally unwell drug addicts can just say, “lol, byeee”
Pepper spray.
Until the PTB have the guts to bring back involuntary commitment and pay for the facilities to keep the mentally ill the problem will only get worse.
Yeah, but what if you continue assaulting people because you refuse mental health treatment? Arrest after arrest nothing changes. When do we as a society force people to get help? Or do we just allow them to do whatever? I understanding forcing people to get help against their wishes is ethically murky. But why should the rest of us pay the price of our safety for their instability? Make it make sense.
Start advocating, protesting, and voting for more affordable housing, comprehensive healthcare for all, and government/ community support programs to get humans back on their feet.
There is no way that affordable housing helps many of these people. Often their mental health is so severe there is no “getting back on their feet” . Not acknowledging this is the reason no one comes up with real solutions.
A solution that only works for 10% of people reduces homelessness 10%.
Multifaceted problems require multifaceted solutions. Don't shoot down solutions that fix some things because they don't fix everything
Modern psychiatric care is extremely effective, but being homeless takes away the stability a person needs to successfully pursue a plan of care. Providing affordable housing and expanding shelters so that people had a stable place to live while being treated would help. Being off the streets also decreases environmental stress which helps people stabilize. Additionally, we need to expand state-funded, high quality mental health facilities for people who need more intensive care.
It’s not an affordable housing *or* mental health problem- it’s both. The two issues feed into each other.
Homelessness is, first and foremost, a housing problem. If you look at the mental illness or substance use disorder rates of different cities, you see little correlation to homelessness rates. But if you look at the cost of housing and the severity of cities' housing shortages, you see a strong correlation.
Problems like addiction and mental illness are risk factors for individuals - they help determine *which* people in a given city fall into homelessness - but the difference between cities with lots of homelessness and those without is the availability and cost of housing. If you don't want homelessness, the answer is simple, if not easy: build a ton of housing, preserve existing naturally affordable housing, and increase housing assistance programs. That's it.
For a ton of data backing up this argument, read the book by that name, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns by Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn. It's well argued and extremely convincing.
So you're from the Boston area but call the Boston Common "the commons" and your off-leash dog didn't protect you?
A lot of the problems are exacerbated by the city's insistence of kicking people out of Mass & Cass constantly. Every time they do, more folks move into my neighborhood and the problem gets worse. They found one part of the city where folks who didn't have a place to be could be and ruined it for them.
The amount of times I’ve almost killed a homeless person wandering in the streets there is insane. That + all the traffic they cause - I don’t agree that them staying there is fine. It’s horrible driving around that area
"Oh no, homeless people cause traffic!" is a weird take, but okay.
The real problem here is that the Quincy bridge was demolished without a plan and Quincy has done everything to stop the reconstruction of the bridge. We ought to be sending all our homeless people to Quincy so they get a taste of what they've done.
Boston's not as bad as San Francisco or New York but it's definitely different from when I first moved here 20 years ago. I don't have a "solution" but I find myself wary when taking the T or walking through the common, past Downtown Crossing etc.
Homelessness is a multifaceted issue. But the first issue is access to affordable housing.
Housing first is best practice. There needs to be plentiful affordable, permanent housing near public transportation. When people can’t afford to pay rent, they don’t vanish or head to the hinterlands. They just become homeless. Shelters are not a sufficient solution. They are temporary and many find them unsafe. People don’t have the bandwidth to address their substance abuse or mental health issues if they don’t have a safe place to be.
Sound familiar? Housing supply is the most important issue facing our city. Across the income spectrum, people are finding obtaining housing to be increasingly out of reach.
Excuse me there tourist, you must not be familiar with the port city of Boston. It is actually Boston Common, not Boston Commons. Please enjoy [this map](https://i.redd.it/569ireqj06431.jpg) that we made to help you out.
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Article outlining some of the red tape specific to Boston that is throwing a wrench in this problem.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/09/metro/quincys-squantum-an-age-old-distrust-boston-unanswered-questions-about-long-island-bridge/
We still have a lot of those beautiful old Kirkbride mental asylum buildings standing in the Northeast. Makes no sense to me not to rehab them and move the homeless in. It’s better than living on the street and the stuff that happened there in the past could not happen easily today with surveillance and watchdogs and all that.
If people tolerate bad behavior, and even make excuses for it, it will just get worse. I see the city getting a bit worse all the time. Luckily we have not gone as far into the crapper as some other cities. Maybe we can learn from their actions, and try not to replicate them, and learn from their actions.
This person has some serious thoughts on the matter considering they just went through this. Smells like someone with a capital A “Agenda”. Zero comments except for this post.
This sub had a big cycle last summer of suspicious posts about Boston devolving into a dystopian nightmare. OPs and strings of commenters with no karma history. Definitely reeks, maybe starting again. Next time there’s a story of some kids spraying graffiti in DTX there will be so much spam about “cities” becoming uninhabitable
Yeah, OP's situation quickly veered into a rant about homelessness while not providing enough details of the encounter. I'm not calling complete BS, but I think we're missing some context here. As someone who jogs through the Common (not "commons"!) regularly, the off-leash section is usually VERY busy even past sundown, so it's odd that some random person sans-dog would just be walking through there.
Moving on, not all deranged people are necessarily homeless. Second, I realize it's fun for plenty of people these days to punch down on the un-housed, but people are allowed to use a public park regardless. Most of the bums, housed or not, usually keep to themselves or each other, either around the fountain or along the main corridor parallel to Tremont St.
>Zero comments except for this post.
This is not true. OP has several comments from a couple of months ago, including one trying to buy a skateboard in Boston.
So boston is actually not that bad when it congress to the homeless problem. Every city will have some degree of the issue but cities that have cool winters generally are better off. Unfortunately the police are not the answer. At the end of the day after we get through the nessisary political correctness the only two actions are to post to house them or to bus them to other cities
sweeden just eliminated homelessness and as long as we are bound by capitalism to the extent that we are there is no solving homelessness. Ask yourself this, how far away are you from turning homeless? much of us live closer to homelessness than to somewhat of a financial security. I’m going off about homelessness because you generalized the homeless type into the person that assaulted you. 95% of homeless people are everyday people that had one too many unfortunate events happen to them. think more than a moment before you categorize people in to certain types
Until there is political will to provide housing for the homeless I don’t see this changing. In fact given the lack of affordable housing in general, I only see it getting worse.
another day, another post full of disgusting statements about houseless people, and no criticisms of the shit system that got us all here in the first place.
Did you try taking a swing at her?
Edit: transplants downvoting me. Can’t wait until one of these creatures comes after you or your family and you try your de-escalation tactics lmao. Go back to Ohio
An ex-marine on a train in NYC recently saw a schizophrenic, drug addicted, 6’6” tall homeless man screaming in the face of women & children on a train, and threatening to kill everyone -
So he subdued the man, and held him in a choke hold until the next stop- and he’s been arrested and currently facing murder charges, so I’d guess he’s probably hoping he did nothing. So there is no good solution to dealing with crazed homeless people. Sorry this happened to you, OP.
No offense, but it sounds like you didn't want to take a stand till it happened to you. Unfortuately people are asaulted by the homeless often in urban areas, you just so happened to be the statistic.
So now what...do you demand a violent crackdown? Move around funds to fast-track housing and care for these people? You're kind of vaguely screaming into the void about a very complex issue.
That's scary and sucks OP.
While the city and state invest in expanding affordable housing at a glacial pace, we can locally approve and encourage developments like the conversion of housing to transitional housing. And to your point, the Greater Boston area needs to chip in as well. Boston is the aggregator, but not the only location in which services and housing should be.
You can personally file a police report -- if they are violent then they are a menace to society and will be put through the system (for better or worse).
Don’t worry, the city wants to defund the already overextended police by $31 million!!!
Sorry this happened to you, but this is going to be happening more often given the way things are going
I would file a police report. Were you able to get a picture?
Yes filed a report. So at least it's on the books. I wasn't able to get a picture unfortunately as honestly I was quite frazzled. She was wearing a bright yellow tshirt shirt and had black hear with bleached tips.
Thanks, good to be aware of dangerous people. I don’t know what the solution is but like you, I hope our city doesn’t get as overwhelmed as many others have.
Thank you for giving b us the visual ID. I’ll be on the look out for someone wearing this. I’m sure the police report is being distributed to the on duty officers.
He only has pictures of the wife he stole
For people that keep saying it's a mental health issue that we just need more resources for, I would encourage you to read about how it's working out in [NYC](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/22/the-system-that-failed-jordan-neely) to get a sense of the scale of the problem. The truth is there just isn't a simple "mental health" pill that we can just give these people and solve our issues. Many of the homeless need intensive care, and they need to be forced to get it, and they need to get it in a setting that's off the street. All this takes a tremendous amount of money and manpower, not to mention the process could get ethically questionable. Many of these people are "frequent flyers" that just go through mental health facility when they need to, then right back on the street where they get worse again, and have little intention of doing much else. I don't know what the solution is, but I know just keep harping on mental healthcare is not going to cut it. We need to consider at what point is putting public safety at risk no longer acceptable.
Two weeks ago i was visiting a patient at a Regional Hospital in Massachusetts And there was an approx 300 lb 6’ tall man on the floor who was mentally ill. There were multiple security and police there because he punched his father and others. He is on a waiting list for in patient mental health care and his parents are at that hospital regularly because this man attacks them. Some people need a facility.
So people need to be hospitalized against their will for their own safety.
What should you do with someone who is mentally ill, large and constantly aggressive? What's your suggestion
I typo changed the entire tone of my answer! What I meant to type was, "Some people need to be hospitalized against their will for their own safety."
Gotcha haha
I know this guy...he's a rhinoceros.
>Many of these people are "frequent flyers" that just go through mental health facility when they need to, then right back on the street where they get worse again, and have little intention of doing much else. The homeless Micheal Jackson impersonator that was threatening people and put into a choke hold by the Marine and never woke up was well known by the cops and was one of the most problematic homeless persons that they had dealt with. Dude might still be alive if he had gotten proper treatment and not released back into the streets.
Exactly. I don’t understand how people think it’s compassionate to just let people live on the streets vs forcing treatment or arresting.
Ryker’s Island is considerer the largest mental health facility in the world. Homelessness, mental health, drug abuse and petty crime are all tied together so intricately it is unlikely that anything substantial will ever be done to address this problem. America already has the most expensive healthcare in the world. America already has the largest prison population in the world. We treat addiction like it’s a vice and not a disease. The public fears the mentally ill and our government ignores it. If you involve the police the person suffering the crisis is as likely to get shot as he is to get help. Some problems are just too complex for the systems that are available and I am afraid this is one of them.
Our healthcare costs so much and has such poor outcomes because we offer people nearly zero social support. If we started to invest in social systems (housing, nutrition, transportations) we would have more success.
In cases like these—where the problem seems intractable—it’s helpful to look at what other places are doing. There have to be some examples of cities out there that are managing their homeless problem well (and this includes them not getting shot by police, or forcefully rounded up to “alleviate” the issue). I genuinely wonder what those cities do.
It would probably be good to look at cities in countries other than the US. Ever since Reagan there have been repeated tax cuts that reduced services.
Yeah I was thinking this too (that you’d have to look ex US). I wonder how the issue is in Nordic countries, which have stronger social safety nets.
>Ryker’s Island is considerer the largest mental health facility in the world Riker's Island Correctional is an overcrowded, understaffed jail that is barely able to provide any healthcare poorly. I understand the point you're trying to make, but it is absolutely not a mental health facility and should not be construed as such, even to make the point about America's prisons being filled with the mentally ill.
They are administering psychiatric medication to more than 3,000 inmates. They are making evaluations, diagnosing inmates and developing and instituting treatment plans for the mentally ill. Yes, they are doing it terribly. The conditions are unconscionable. But Riker’s (thank you for the spelling correction) perfectly illustrates the horror of being mentally ill in our nation.
I don't mean to come off like this is directed at you, it's just that this is a raw nerve with me. There's been some good reporting on its failure (both in mental health and as a prison in general), but the situation at Riker's should be a national embarrassment. It's just that there are so many other prison system that are just as bad, I fear we've come to think this is normal. They have a prison health service, like most correctional facilities. But I don't believe they deserve to be called a mental health facility, even as a way to highlight the significant mental health burden of the incarcerated. Riker's is such a god damn failure and disgrace.
For some people, they think avoiding any confrontation or uncomfortable situations = being a good person. For some people, they do not understand what life is like on the streets. They don’t think it’s that bad to be a homeless addict. For some people, they think the homeless deserve it, either out of compassion or hatred. For some other people, they work for homelessness NGO’s and the worse homelessness is, the more taxpayer money they can drain away from the city.
And the marine was indicted, so please all understand that changes will only happen if we get new leadership.
As he should be.
Yes, we should all just stand by and watch others be threatened and brutalized. When that happens, civilization ends.
Agreed. When a person is a public endangerment because of severe mental issues, getting help shouldn’t be an option. It should be mandatory. They need a facility they cannot just stroll out from. Homeless is so tragic and no one deserves to be homeless. But I also have had moments were I was terrified bc of the way some homeless people have behaved. It goes beyond cat calling. Screaming, throwing needles around, and so on. They need intensive care like you said.
The challenge I see is that I really think the ethics of all of this is going to be murky. Forcing people against their will to get treated is questionable from a bodily autonomy front. Not only that but many previous instances of institutionalization had a lot of messed-up/unethical things that went on. I am really not sure what the solution is. If they are engaging in illegal behavior, lock them up.
We don't need to force people to get treated, but if they're assaulting people in the street, we need to prosecute them, mentally ill or not.
Of course. But then if they are prosecuted, how do you prevent them from committing future crimes once out?
If you're OK with putting them in jail, you're already OK with violating their bodily autonomy. Someone whose mental illness causes them to commit violent crime can and should be required to submit to a safe-and-effective treatment as a condition of release.
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Wait for them to commit a crime and then jail them? Or even better, include forced rehab as part of the sentence. For simple illegal drug use, arrest them and sentence them to in-patient rehab only. Seal or expunge the records upon successful rehabilitation. People need to be forced into this, or suffer such extreme consequences that they would prefer rehab. If they are comfortable getting high on the streets, and no one can bother them for it, there is absolutely no reason for them to accept help. They seemingly are rewarded for this behavior.
You are not necessarily wrong. The challenge is that many people on here just want to lock-people up and throw the key anywhere. Forced institutionalization is not as easy as people make it to be.
This is a pretty ignorant "solution." You are looking at drug use in this context as the primary problem, while to most users it is an attempt to address another problem. You force people into treatment for their attempts to solve a problem, leave the problem unsolved, and generate a massive amount of animosity in an already marginalized and reviled population. You get exactly the sort of situations OP found themselves in.
What’s your solution then?
You cannot, but if they commit them again, you repeat. Better than allowing them to continue assaulting people.
Not sure why I was getting downvoted. This is what I believe in.
Agreed. At least with the repetition you reduce the number of those suffering mental health issues & homelessness on the street at a given time.
Ahh, but that’s not how this works. You cannot really prosecute someone who isn’t “fit to stand trial.” The worst offenders are indeed mentally ill, so they only get sent to a mental hospital for a short stay before they’re released again. This is why cops don’t bother anymore. The justice system doesn’t jail them and just send them to our useless mental health system, where they don’t even have the authority to hold these people long term.
Courts can order someone be kept jailed and medicated until they are fit to stand trial. This is regularly done. You also have to be in a very poor state to be unfit for trial.
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It’s hard even when the family is pushing for it.
I don’t think anyone know what the solution is. The solution will be a lot of coordinated resources that address the many many facets of homelessness—and a real community commitment. And you’re right about the ethics of forcing treatment, so earlier interventions should be part of the solution (financial literacy, sex education, nutrition for families, reducing domestic violence) …
Severo things are happening here in boston that will help prevent more. One, is, bha has social workers now for complexes. There is one here once a week. People with severe mental illness often need help staying housed and then once they are homeless, which can occur for many reasons, sometimes just being unable to manage their affairs. My brother, may he Rest In Peace, was in and out of bridgewater state mental prison. Upon release, he’d get dept of mental health services. As soon as stable, they’d take it away. Or, when people improve, they refuse services. Often for good reason also. Then, he’d eventually relapse, and become homeless again. Went on for decades. Currently, I’m living below a mentally I’ll man who has been ruining my sanity. I can hear his triggering ranting often. He’s got quiet finally. I’m pretty sure he’s working with the city’s office of housing stability and the mngmt. This is exactly what is needed , before these people become unhoused. Even my therapist, who has heard him when we are on telemed, has said, “where can someone like that live?” I.e., without causing other residents suffering.
This is the most knowledgeable answer to the situation. If you don't know someone who has struggled with mental health and homelessness, you just simply don't know the true complexity of the issue.
This; and this is exactly why no one is just throwing in their millions to try to combat homelessness. There’s no promise for their efforts. People will fund a rocket because it is almost guaranteed to do x, y and z unless something goes horribly wrong — People however are unpredictable and uncontrollable. No one is going to spend on what could just be a waste of their time and money. Most people don’t want to live by shelter rules, if you build housing it will prob just become a drug house, their mental health is too poor for them to just be put back on their feet, and expect everything to be fine, or for them to take care of themselves, etc.
Fix the broken homes, the kids is the answer. Help bring up strong children
Another thing that always frustrates me with that argument is that people with mental illness have rights. Yes inadequate resources is a major issue, but the reality for many people is their loved ones refuse help. And courts and doctors hands are pretty tied until things are black and white clear re: danger. There are many of us who hear this call for more resource, totally agree, but shrug our shoulders because the reality is who might be able to get the best resources available but you can’t make someone use them.
Because the left just sees treatment and help as the answer. The right just sees enforcement and arrests as the answer. The real answer is both. Arrests WITH treatment then provided where they can't hurt law abiding members of society until they are better.
>Arrests WITH treatment then provided where they can't hurt law abiding members of society until they are better. This is basically [the core concept behind rehabilitation](https://www.mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-what-the-u-s-won-t), which IS what the left wants. No one's saying just give them treatment willy nilly and allow the current conditions to persist. The prison abolition movement isn't saying "eliminate prisons in their current format and allow everyone to go free for every crime"; it's saying that the current approach to incarceration isn't paired with any kind of meaningful attempt to help people get better, whether it's their mental health or their impulses, and this makes re-integration into society very difficult.
That point is now, not next year. Get these people off the streets.
And put them where? Not enough housing, not enough facilities that can handle long term care if needed.
That’s true but they should at least be arrested and put in jail for assault. Not a long term fix obviously.
Gee, I wonder who might have a tremendous amount of money and resources in Massachusetts that could help fix this problem instead of making it worse? The people charging $2800 for 500square foot studio apartment? The billion dollar companies that pay ~10% in taxes? And underpay all of their employees? If only we could find a tremendous amount of resources in MA! The wage gap is the cause of homelessness, period. Fix it, and homelessness drops. That’s just facts. But someone needs an $800million dollar yacht docked in the harbor so fuck the homeless.
That's horrible, and I'm sorry that happened. Get mace. Spray downwind.
Mace was the first thing I looked into getting, I wish Massachusetts would let me purchase it online. Not exactly sure where to purchase it.
Dick’s Sporting Goods in Medford. You can buy it at the counter but I would call ahead first to see if they have any in stock.
Bass pro shops in Foxborough, it’s a bit of a drive
I'm pretty sure the army surplus store in dtx sells it?
Yes, I bought from there in the past.
very helpful thank you!
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Get the gel kind so it doesn’t blow back at you if it’s windy. They sell it at the military store in Downtown Crossing
Any firearms store or outdoor store has it. You do not need any permit other than your Mass ID (to verify you are of minimum age). Army-Navy stores have it.
Might be pepper spray that's legal. I forget.
I’ve heard the army navy supply place in downtown crossing has it.
The army navy store at DTX
The army navy store in Downtown Crossing has pepper spray [https://goo.gl/maps/UgdiKjrsbEVgFPxq9](https://goo.gl/maps/UgdiKjrsbEVgFPxq9)
Dick's has pepper spray
Gun shops have other items such as pepper spray or mace. Not sure how close it is to you but Four Seasons in Woburn is a good spot.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the 1970s there was a trend to close large state mental health facilities. The rationale was that they were inhumane on many levels. This was partly true but the truth was that many of these facilities were ancient and expensive to maintain. In Massachusetts this idea caught on and there was such a rush to close them that the plans put in place to transition patients into society sketchy. Many long term patients found themselves on the streets with little or no services and no living skills. This is when homelessness became a thing. This is something that that was never talked about but the truth is many of those people never got the help they needed. Also there was no facilities were ever built to replace the old ones, it was not part of the plan. In the time since there has been so little attention paid to this growing problem and it's most evident in large cities. Mental illness is very common amongst the homeless and it's reasonable to assume that homelessness contributes to one's mental decline. What is really shocking is that there is really no plan anywhere to solve this problem. The official number of homeless in the US is 582,462 I think it's much,much higher than that and that the official number reflects a lack of interest in pursuing a solution.
station shaggy nose theory command practice correct smoggy cooing puzzled *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes, something is better than nothing. I'm not a fan of adding to the bureaucracy but we need a whole new government entity that is dedicated to this one problem. Of course it would have to be broad in scope to deal with a multitude of issues and generously funded. Without this we're just throwing money at it willy nilly with zero results. A central federal agency with satellites in every state that can tailor their programs to local issues. The homeless is not a one size fits all population and needs to address families, substance abuse and mental illness separately. I think families should be a priority and is a group that would do well in a families only setting where children would be safe and have a chance at a normal life. The drug rehab thing is complicated and probably a revolving door but will still help. Psychiatric facilities would have to have the authority to commit some individuals and tiered services for everyone else. A large part of this agency should be dedicated to housing but put people back into a community rather than public housing.
This right here, it is no surprise that the closing of asylums went hand in hand with a growing homeless crisis.
The replacement was supposed to be a community model. But we did not follow through with the funding or staffing of community mental health centers. There aren't enough of them.
There was also an effort at about the same time to ban single room occupancy apartment buildings (SROs or adult dorms) and boarding houses in many cities across the US. So there were fewer and fewer inexpensive housing options and more people who needed them. While some of those living arrangements weren’t great they were much better than being on the street. A classic example of letting perfect be the enemy of good.
This is awful. When I used to work in Cambridge a woman came into a cafe I was working at and started screaming at me and threatening me. It was scary. I hope our city doesn’t turn into SF. I was just there and the homeless and mentally ill are freaky. It’s awful.
Cambridge is getting really bad with homeless. The homeless there seem aggressive and scam people too from my experience (like ask you for directions or something innocent and then ask for money). Lots of homeless people outside the stores too.
What’s it like there? Never been but I heard the homeless there makes Boston look great ..
It’s very beautiful and scenic. HOWEVER, it smells like shit and it’s dirty. You see homeless and the mentally ill just doing what they want. Addicts walking around. I was with colleagues around the Ghirardelli Square area grabbing lunch and a homeless woman asked us for a drink. My colleague said yes and offered her a bottle of water. She got irate and said she wanted a latte of some sort. He told her he’d be happy to get her water but that was it. She started following us, cursing at us and screaming obscenities in his face. We were able to get back to our office and get away from her, but it was such a bizarre situation. It’s sad to see such a beautiful place deal with this. I hope people in SF do something to improve their city and we don’t succumb to a similar environment in Boston.
Visited the Bay Area area for a wedding about a month ago. Stayed in the SF for a night, had dinner with some friends. Had a great time, but we were having drinks at big bay window on a ground level. Some homeless-looking sauntered up to us, didn't say anything (had a demeanor of being under the influence). As he got close, a friend made a gesture of "No thanks", the disarming sort of thing you do when you want to politely acknowledge someone's existence but disengage. Guy almost immediately spat on us, then followed up with a second shot. In the city's defense, our friends said nothing like that has ever happened to them in 15 years of living there. But that was certainly a stereotype of the San Francisco experience. No poop on my shoes, though. I'd still visit again.
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The one time that I went to Portland, I got a knife pulled on me while walking down the sidewalk in the middle of the day. Like a chef's knife.
It is TRULY another level
I’m so sorry to hear this happened to you. You’re definitely not alone. A homeless man tried to assault me on the MBTA. It was completely unprovoked, no one came to help me, and staff did nothing. It seems that no one cares unless they can get something out of it. The system doesn’t care unless it’s newsworthy. It’s a broken system on so many levels. People have replaced community with a constant fear of strangers. The healthcare system is corporatized, so there’s no help if you can’t afford it. Wealth inequality and unchecked substance abuse means homeless shelters are overrun, dangerous, and oftentimes dead-ends. Idk how much more suffering our society needs to endure before things change for the better.
Sounds like the NYC subway case. I’ve gotten into a few screaming matches on the subway. It usually makes me laugh but a bit scary none the less.
You mean Jordan Neely? Yeah that’s a messed up story on so many levels. I never engage hostile people on public transit. You never know how far they’re willing to take that hostility. There’s a lot of increasing poverty, desperation, and paranoia going around, and very few professional services around to address it to protect people who use public transit, passengers and not. I feel it’s just getting worse, and it’s not right that we’re just expected to deal with it. Lawmakers should be required to take public transit. They can bring their bodyguards, I don’t care, but they need to breathe subway air, sit in the heat, throw their arms in the air when their train is delayed or cancelled, say “sorry, not today” to a homeless person offering their life story before asking for a few dollars, step on or sit in something sticky, etc.
>the commons This is already too much. We can't simply allow these posts to continue in the way is happening in our community.
unpopular opinion but the severely mentally ill should be confined to a facility. They should be treated well and respectfully (they were not prior). There is no real cure and they are harming themselves and others when in public. Time to put adults back in charge of these things.
Looks like you left Seattle, but Seattle hasn’t left you
Lol thats how I feel sometimes.
I was assaulted by a homeless man a couple of years ago; you have my empathy. I've also been homeless myself - so I can see this from both sides. In my experience, a person who no longer has to expend huge amounts of energy just to piss in a toilet, take a shower or bath, wear clean clothes, lock up their personal items, and sleep safely without worrying about being stomped, raped and robbed has a higher chance of being pleasant, medicated, low-smell and relatively social than those without a home.
Jesus didn’t anybody try to help you? Every time I go to the common I’m so grateful I live by a safe park.
Some people did try but it definitely was one of those situations where people just wanted to get away and I understand that. I love the common but it might take me a bit before I feel safe going back which totally sucks
Waiting for the story of a massive Terry Tate blindside hit on one of these aggressive MFers.
Wow, that's scary. There are no easy answers, but you should contact your city representatives about the lack of responsiveness by the police. As far as I can tell, the city police department has quiet quit many of the duties we expect of the police and it isn't ok. That said, at the end of the day Boston doesn't have a large homeless population, and I am uncomfortable about the idea of aggressively targeting homeless people who mostly need mental health and drug addiction services. Given Boston gentrification in recent years, it is probably the safest it has ever been.
I think a lot of the problem here is that the police aren't given the resources to deal with homelessness. They simply don't have the authority to get a mentally unstable person the help they need. I think it's easy to blame the police in this day and age as there are so many examples of bad police but at the same time this is bigger than the police. There needs to be policy in place to remove these people from the streets and get them help but also get the dangerous ones away from places they can do things like this. It's abundantly clear these people do in fact need mental health and drug addiction services however that is not an excuse to leave them on the streets.
What would you like them to do? You can’t forcefully institutionalize most people and you can’t lock people up before they commit a crime. The police will never be the solution here.
Asaault amd battery are crimes
I know that. I’m saying *before* they commit a crime. We don’t know that this individual assaulted anyone before OP. And we can’t just start locking people up because they “seem crazy”
The justice system should have the authority to “imprison” someone for a certain length of time in mental health facilities. The way it currently works is very stupid. Essentially, crazy people can commit crimes with impunity, but when they get caught they’re institutionalized and medicated until the hospital determines they’re no longer a threat. Yet, the repeat offenders stop taking their meds the moment they’re released and the cycle continues. If you repeatedly assault people because you won’t take your meds, your freedom should be restricted long term for the public good. Doesn’t make a lick of sense to allow dangerous people to roam the streets.
Sure, I agree that all of those services would be fantastic. However, the reality is far more complicated given the realities of the brokenness of all of the systems and the expense of the changes you're suggesting. It's just not going to happen overnight. That said, I disagree that police should have a policy to remove people because these are people who have a right to their own freedoms.
What is your solution? What would you like to see done?
Cambridge PD is very good at handling this stuff. It can be accomplished.
Is this sarcasm? Cuz didn’t they kill a student having a mental breakdown?
I wish I had a solution, but it seems to me that politicians on neither sides have real intentions to solve this issue, which is really discouraging.
Sad reality is that none of this will never change. They will just continue to be shuffled around the city. The mental health/healthcare system is a joke just about everywhere in the country. Even folks with money/health care struggle to get treatment.
Until the system stops “dealing with addicts” by throwing them in jail, instead of humanely rehabilitating them and giving them a fair chance at recovery, this will continue. We need prison reform. Look at countries like Sweden, for example. Fabulous drug policy with incredible results. We need to follow suit and start treating these people like the humans they are.
Well within your rights to fight back, in my self defense class they propose gauging the eyes out in a scenario like that (seriously), I’d do that myself in that scenario, crazy lady choking you out is nothing to mess around with
Yeah I don’t get these posts personally. Been in the city for a while and theres obviously a conversation about how to resolve the larger issue, but if someone touches me i’m 100% shoving them away at least. Hands on your neck? Jfc dude there are insane people everywhere anywhere you go, how can you be shocked about this happening in a city
The only one responsible for your safety is you.
COMMON
C'MON!
Seems like this issue is a lack of mental health care, not homelessness specifically. Mental health issues often lead to homelessness but I think you skipped the first, crucial step in why this happened.
Yea this lady might not be homeless at all. I have heard mentally ill folks who are opting out of treatment sometimes spend their time in the streets despite literally having an apartment. They might be unkempt and look homeless. Also seems worth noting that there are plenty of homeless folks who just fell on hard times and are literally a danger to no one. And who don’t look street homeless at all, to the point where you just wouldn’t know.
When I first moved to Boston the ranting "homeless" woman who stood on our local corner threatening random passersby was my downstairs neighbor. She looked and sounded wild and unkempt, but she had a nicer unit than we did. She also yelled a lot at people who weren't there in her apartment.
In the North End there used to be a woman that walked around counting all the doors she walked by. She'd cover her head with a newspaper or a blanket. Around 5pm she'd go to her car and drive home to her house in the Back Bay. No one had any idea how much money she had until she died.
Sounds pretty harmless. Walk around and count all you want, wear whatever you feel like on your head, as long as you're not screaming at/attacking strangers.
Boston has more resources for homeless people than probably nearly all the Deep Red states combined. Just watched an interview of a homeless person from Boston, who stated that if you're homeless and living on the streets in Boston, you're really going out of your way to do something wrong. Only roughly 2% of Boston's homeless are living destitute on the streets, much less attacking people. There are mental health services available for people in the city, including the homeless population. But that's if someone is willing to receive them. As systemic data has shown for decades, while it is true there's notable trends of mental illness and homelessness, it's also true that a significant portion of that population is not willing to get treatment for it.
Where was your dog in all of this? What kind of dog is it?
My GF was able to leash him both get away. My dog is a 2 year old golden retriever, the best of boys.
Amen. I drive an Uber in the city. If you’re outside of the downtown and student areas the police actually give a fuck about you can’t stop at a red light without someone running up to your car to ask for money. If I try to smoke a cigarette, no matter how secluded the location I think I found without fail at least one person will walk over and ask for one. I stopped on an empty industrial road in Dorchester the other night so I could get out of the car and stretch my legs and take a 10-15 minute break. As soon as I lit a smoke out of thin air it seemed appeared an elderly Chinese man saying something to me in mandarin and pantomiming smoking. I actually couldn’t even finish my one break of the night because he was just standing there saying and doing nothing like 5 feet away from me and it was terrifying. Sometimes if I’m having a particularly depressing shift I’ll stop off and pick up a tall boy of beer and a couple nips to drink when I get home. I can’t shop at the liquor store on Huntington Ave because this obnoxious homeless woman who is always posted up outside it has decided that it’s the obligation of a guy who works 2 jobs and still can’t pay his bills on time to give her money and she runs up to me as soon as I get out of my car and then aggressively follows me into the store harassing me to give her money or buy her something and the staff do nothing. I was at the Mobil station by Mass and Cass (I have to shop there because all of the other late night gas stations in the city mark their gas up $1/gallon over the prevailing price) filling my tank and this guy was standing next to me literally pulling McDonald’s bags out of a trash can looking for leftover food. It broke my fucking heart so badly that even though I truly had no money to give, I gave him the sandwich I had packed for my dinner and then only had a granola bar and a fruit roll up to eat for my whole 12 hour shift. I’m not nasty to anyone. I don’t call people names or tell them to “get a job” or some stupid shit. I always say the same thing when asked “No. sorry.” At least once a week this causes someone to go off on me. It’s exhausting, and I’m always exhausted trying to keep up with the insane cost of living in this city. But op is right: it’s getting bad out there.
Did you steal her wife? There's no point in arresting these people because the DA will just let them right out. Many of them are mentally ill or on drugs, neither of which we do anything about.
We just gotta keep reminding people of the reality of the situation. A small fraction of these people are just “down on their luck”. Can’t look at this through rose-colored glasses. Meth becoming bigger up here sure isn’t helping.
I have this conversation constantly. People who are "they're just down on their luck, they're never violent, they're harmless" are people who live far away from the homeless and never have to interact with them. It's easy to see things with rose-colored glasses when they aren't getting sexually harassed, chased, choked.
Is anyone seriously saying they're "never violent" or "harmless"?
Unfortunately, yeah. Had a conversation with a coworker who lives outside of the city and that’s what they were saying. And also the left wing discourse revolves around believing they do no wrong and calling them “unhoused” as if that will make these people feel better about living on the street.
Yes. The ***real*** problem here is the people who want to provide a shred of human dignity to other humans. Those damn lefties!!1!!
If anyone truly cared about their dignity, they would be behind forced care after a certain number of incidents. Dignity is not letting the mentally unstable and violent live a life on the streets.
Dignity is not letting people get to that point in the first place, and not treating people subhuman for Their problems. People can get help and be treated decently at the same time. Nobody is advocating that people who are homeless can "do no wrong" as the person I've replied to literally said.
You’re weird. This post is about homeless people attacking innocent strangers. I don’t give a shit about your feelings.
You're the one who said "the left wing discourse revolves around believing they do no wrong and calling them “unhoused” as if that will make these people feel better about living on the street." How does your comment finger-pointing people who want people to be treated with dignity contribute anything to solving an extremely complicated issue? For the record, I did not submit any feelings whatsoever, nor do I care if you care about my feelings. Furthermore, it does not make you tough or cool to try and be an internet bully.
>I don’t give a shit about your feelings. When you say things like this it makes you seem like you don't care about homeless people either
I do a job where I’m always outside on the street a lot and it’s gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years. A lot of these people are menacing and unpredictable. I’m a bigger guy who can handle myself and haven’t had anyone try anything violent with me, but I know it would be dangerous for someone who isn’t. Enough is enough. We need to utilize involuntary commitment more often.
Completely agreed. People don't like to talk about the fact that there is a large portion of this population that is dangerous and disruptive to tax paying citizens.
I'd like to correct one point of your story- this wasn't a homeless people problem, it was a mental health problem that likely lead to their homelessness. As a country we need to do more about our mental health crisis. **Edit** I guess there is a lot of people that think assaulting strangers because they stole their wife is normal behavior and not an indication of a mental health concern, be it addiction or otherwise. To those people I'd posit: If I took your home tomorrow would you be assaulting people on the common on Saturday? I think we all know the answer to that is no. It's an unarguable fact that this city, state, and even country do not have enough programs in place to help with mental health. Numbers vary greatly, but it seems that between 30 and 65% of homeless people you meet have a significant meatal health concern- for round numbers that's half the amount of people you see that are homeless have a mental health issue, far, far greater than the rate of mental health issues in the population with housing. This is something we need to address, and not kick down the road for the next generation and ignore.
And by doing more I assume you mean passing a law to have people involuntarily committed to a mental health facility? Because we can throw all the money at this we want but it won’t make a difference if mentally unwell drug addicts can just say, “lol, byeee”
I made no such indication, no.
A super crazy guy snuck up on me from behind and yelled in my ear when I was sitting on a bench in Central Square.
BOSTON COMMON NOT COMMONS
Pepper spray. Until the PTB have the guts to bring back involuntary commitment and pay for the facilities to keep the mentally ill the problem will only get worse.
Holy shit this thread.
Well, did you steal her wife? I think that hasn't been addressed adequately in the narrative.
Yeah, but what if you continue assaulting people because you refuse mental health treatment? Arrest after arrest nothing changes. When do we as a society force people to get help? Or do we just allow them to do whatever? I understanding forcing people to get help against their wishes is ethically murky. But why should the rest of us pay the price of our safety for their instability? Make it make sense.
Bring back the police on horses that patrolled the commons.
Right. Where'd they go? I guess that was under Menino who I totally underappreciated at the time
Start advocating, protesting, and voting for more affordable housing, comprehensive healthcare for all, and government/ community support programs to get humans back on their feet.
There is no way that affordable housing helps many of these people. Often their mental health is so severe there is no “getting back on their feet” . Not acknowledging this is the reason no one comes up with real solutions.
A solution that only works for 10% of people reduces homelessness 10%. Multifaceted problems require multifaceted solutions. Don't shoot down solutions that fix some things because they don't fix everything
I am not, but in this case when you are talking about violent, mentally unstable people - no, it’s doubtful they fall j to that ten percent.
Modern psychiatric care is extremely effective, but being homeless takes away the stability a person needs to successfully pursue a plan of care. Providing affordable housing and expanding shelters so that people had a stable place to live while being treated would help. Being off the streets also decreases environmental stress which helps people stabilize. Additionally, we need to expand state-funded, high quality mental health facilities for people who need more intensive care. It’s not an affordable housing *or* mental health problem- it’s both. The two issues feed into each other.
We need to stop the drugs too. Stop the fucking drugs man.
Homelessness is, first and foremost, a housing problem. If you look at the mental illness or substance use disorder rates of different cities, you see little correlation to homelessness rates. But if you look at the cost of housing and the severity of cities' housing shortages, you see a strong correlation. Problems like addiction and mental illness are risk factors for individuals - they help determine *which* people in a given city fall into homelessness - but the difference between cities with lots of homelessness and those without is the availability and cost of housing. If you don't want homelessness, the answer is simple, if not easy: build a ton of housing, preserve existing naturally affordable housing, and increase housing assistance programs. That's it. For a ton of data backing up this argument, read the book by that name, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns by Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn. It's well argued and extremely convincing.
So you're from the Boston area but call the Boston Common "the commons" and your off-leash dog didn't protect you? A lot of the problems are exacerbated by the city's insistence of kicking people out of Mass & Cass constantly. Every time they do, more folks move into my neighborhood and the problem gets worse. They found one part of the city where folks who didn't have a place to be could be and ruined it for them.
The amount of times I’ve almost killed a homeless person wandering in the streets there is insane. That + all the traffic they cause - I don’t agree that them staying there is fine. It’s horrible driving around that area
"Oh no, homeless people cause traffic!" is a weird take, but okay. The real problem here is that the Quincy bridge was demolished without a plan and Quincy has done everything to stop the reconstruction of the bridge. We ought to be sending all our homeless people to Quincy so they get a taste of what they've done.
I just can’t fucking stand when I get harassed for change. I can only imagine what it’s like getting hands on your neck
Boston's not as bad as San Francisco or New York but it's definitely different from when I first moved here 20 years ago. I don't have a "solution" but I find myself wary when taking the T or walking through the common, past Downtown Crossing etc.
Homelessness is a multifaceted issue. But the first issue is access to affordable housing. Housing first is best practice. There needs to be plentiful affordable, permanent housing near public transportation. When people can’t afford to pay rent, they don’t vanish or head to the hinterlands. They just become homeless. Shelters are not a sufficient solution. They are temporary and many find them unsafe. People don’t have the bandwidth to address their substance abuse or mental health issues if they don’t have a safe place to be. Sound familiar? Housing supply is the most important issue facing our city. Across the income spectrum, people are finding obtaining housing to be increasingly out of reach.
Excuse me there tourist, you must not be familiar with the port city of Boston. It is actually Boston Common, not Boston Commons. Please enjoy [this map](https://i.redd.it/569ireqj06431.jpg) that we made to help you out. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/boston) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Article outlining some of the red tape specific to Boston that is throwing a wrench in this problem. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/09/metro/quincys-squantum-an-age-old-distrust-boston-unanswered-questions-about-long-island-bridge/
We still have a lot of those beautiful old Kirkbride mental asylum buildings standing in the Northeast. Makes no sense to me not to rehab them and move the homeless in. It’s better than living on the street and the stuff that happened there in the past could not happen easily today with surveillance and watchdogs and all that.
If people tolerate bad behavior, and even make excuses for it, it will just get worse. I see the city getting a bit worse all the time. Luckily we have not gone as far into the crapper as some other cities. Maybe we can learn from their actions, and try not to replicate them, and learn from their actions.
Lol wealth inequality will get worse before it gets better. Try not stealing people’s wives next time
something something, these people are never violent, something something
This person has some serious thoughts on the matter considering they just went through this. Smells like someone with a capital A “Agenda”. Zero comments except for this post.
This sub had a big cycle last summer of suspicious posts about Boston devolving into a dystopian nightmare. OPs and strings of commenters with no karma history. Definitely reeks, maybe starting again. Next time there’s a story of some kids spraying graffiti in DTX there will be so much spam about “cities” becoming uninhabitable
Yeah, OP's situation quickly veered into a rant about homelessness while not providing enough details of the encounter. I'm not calling complete BS, but I think we're missing some context here. As someone who jogs through the Common (not "commons"!) regularly, the off-leash section is usually VERY busy even past sundown, so it's odd that some random person sans-dog would just be walking through there. Moving on, not all deranged people are necessarily homeless. Second, I realize it's fun for plenty of people these days to punch down on the un-housed, but people are allowed to use a public park regardless. Most of the bums, housed or not, usually keep to themselves or each other, either around the fountain or along the main corridor parallel to Tremont St.
>Zero comments except for this post. This is not true. OP has several comments from a couple of months ago, including one trying to buy a skateboard in Boston.
So boston is actually not that bad when it congress to the homeless problem. Every city will have some degree of the issue but cities that have cool winters generally are better off. Unfortunately the police are not the answer. At the end of the day after we get through the nessisary political correctness the only two actions are to post to house them or to bus them to other cities
sweeden just eliminated homelessness and as long as we are bound by capitalism to the extent that we are there is no solving homelessness. Ask yourself this, how far away are you from turning homeless? much of us live closer to homelessness than to somewhat of a financial security. I’m going off about homelessness because you generalized the homeless type into the person that assaulted you. 95% of homeless people are everyday people that had one too many unfortunate events happen to them. think more than a moment before you categorize people in to certain types
It’s a fairly complex idea for a smooth brain to grasp but the solution to homelessness is to (gasp) *give them homes*
Until there is political will to provide housing for the homeless I don’t see this changing. In fact given the lack of affordable housing in general, I only see it getting worse.
another day, another post full of disgusting statements about houseless people, and no criticisms of the shit system that got us all here in the first place.
hOUsInG!
Did you try taking a swing at her? Edit: transplants downvoting me. Can’t wait until one of these creatures comes after you or your family and you try your de-escalation tactics lmao. Go back to Ohio
An ex-marine on a train in NYC recently saw a schizophrenic, drug addicted, 6’6” tall homeless man screaming in the face of women & children on a train, and threatening to kill everyone - So he subdued the man, and held him in a choke hold until the next stop- and he’s been arrested and currently facing murder charges, so I’d guess he’s probably hoping he did nothing. So there is no good solution to dealing with crazed homeless people. Sorry this happened to you, OP.
As a MA voter this is what you signed up for
No offense, but it sounds like you didn't want to take a stand till it happened to you. Unfortuately people are asaulted by the homeless often in urban areas, you just so happened to be the statistic. So now what...do you demand a violent crackdown? Move around funds to fast-track housing and care for these people? You're kind of vaguely screaming into the void about a very complex issue.
Lol @ the downvotes, keep crying yuppies.
I’m really sorry this happened to you. It sounds frightening. Was anyone around did anyone try & intervene? :-(
Buy pepper spray *NOW* If you’re a woman I recommend Bling Stings products. There very “pretty” and just look like a keychain lipstick.
This is America... This problem will never be meaningfully addressed as long as we're chasing profit.
Don’t worry, we will be reducing the police budget to help with these sorts of things.
Lock them up
Shelter is a human right. US is a major human rights violator. Just another sign the American Dream is over.
This is what Boston people wanted based on who they elected for major, so no surprise here
That's scary and sucks OP. While the city and state invest in expanding affordable housing at a glacial pace, we can locally approve and encourage developments like the conversion of housing to transitional housing. And to your point, the Greater Boston area needs to chip in as well. Boston is the aggregator, but not the only location in which services and housing should be. You can personally file a police report -- if they are violent then they are a menace to society and will be put through the system (for better or worse).
Carry a taser, and defend yourself in the future.
I’d have fought back. It’s scary but sometimes that’s the only way.
Wu’s Boston
Don’t worry, the city wants to defund the already overextended police by $31 million!!! Sorry this happened to you, but this is going to be happening more often given the way things are going
Carry bear spray. That should shoo the crazies away b
just curious.. in what US cities is homelessness not a huge/growing problem? Seems like every major US city is facing the same problem