“It’s progressively gotten worse,” said Leins, who opened her shop a year and a half ago. “Both of my sons, they come to the shop every day and they see it. Unfortunately, it’s normalized.”
Boston’s addiction and cost-of-living crisis has touched all corners of the city, especially as public health officials and social workers moved a year ago to disrupt and decentralize the large encampments that took hold by the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard. On the Boston Common, increases in public drug use have made neighbors and tourists feel less safe, civil and business association leaders said last month at a City Council hearing. At a hearing in October, some residents voiced similar concerns about Andrew Square in South Boston.
Nubian Square has long had a homeless population. But it is now seeing increased open-air drug sales and an attendant increase in opioid overdoses, according to police data and public health officials. The shift comes at a crucial time for the neighborhood, as city officials and private developers have teamed up to draft big plans to invest in an under-resourced area known as the heart of Boston’s Black community.
“It really has a negative impact on how we function and flourish in Nubian Square,” said Robert George, executive director of the small-business advocacy nonprofit Roxbury Main Streets. “We hear from the owners on a day-to-day business saying, ‘I don’t know how long we can do this.’ ”
On a recent afternoon, a few people carrying shopping bags or pushing carts huddled on Washington Street just west of the square’s bus terminal, braced against a biting November wind. They said they had been living on the streets but did not want to be interviewed.
George described the increase in homelessness and drug use as “spillover from the Methadone Mile,” a derogatory term that has been used to describe the area of Mass. and Cass, where a dense collection of substance abuse treatment programs, including methadone clinics, are located.
He and others called for additional housing and addiction services in Nubian Square to help people in need, saying the same concentration of services that the city poured into Mass. and Cass should be replicated elsewhere, and that business owners who are trying to revitalize the area also deserve support.
Kelly Young, director of the city’s Coordinated Response Team to address the crisis near Mass. and Cass, said outreach workers from her team visit neighborhoods such as Nubian Square and Grove Hall five nights per week. She said Mayor Michelle Wu had tasked her team with preventing mass public drug use, and that police provide a necessary deterrent.
“Law enforcement will help us to provide the necessary care and increase the likelihood of a person’s participation in a treatment plan along with services without sentences,” Young said.
The crisis at Mass. and Cass can be traced to the closing of the Long Island Bridge in 2014, which cut off access to shelter and addiction services on the island. People contending with homelessness and substance use disorders began congregating and sleeping near the intersection, where a homeless shelter for men is also located. The city ramped up services, attracting more people to the area. Dealers also turned the area into a public drug market. As conditions there became normalized, people set up encampments, which the city repeatedly tried to shut down, culminating in a large-scale clear-out in October 2023.
On an afternoon in late October, Abdul Adil sat on a folding chair next to the vendor tent he has operated near the Nubian Square transit terminal since 2020. Speaker systems and handbags were piled on a long table; dresses and skirts hung from the tent struts. Adil said he has noticed a spike in people congregating nearby since the city cleared out the encampments.
“When they put pressure within Mass. and Cass, they spill over here,” he said. “A lot of people are not getting the help they need.”
City officials have taken note of the concerns. The Boston City Council held a hearing on the crisis at Mass. and Cass in October, and both public health and police officials testified that they recognized that the situation in Nubian Square was worsening.
Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, who represents Roxbury, called for increased coordination and funding to provide much-needed services.
“It’s trickled down to our neighborhoods, Nubian Square, all parts of Roxbury at this point,” she said.
Bisola Ojikutu, the city’s commissioner of public health, said Nubian Square has become a focal point of Boston’s outreach programs, as city officials recognize that the open-air narcotics trade has dispersed from Mass. and Cass to other parts of the city.
“We know that it has arisen as an area of concern with increased congregation of individuals living with substance use disorder,” Ojikutu said at the hearing. ”Substance use disorder and open drug use.”
She cited work done by the Nubian Square Task Force, which brings together the health commission and more than two dozen health organizations, advocacy groups, businesses, and nonprofits to coordinate efforts to help the growing number of people who need housing, health care, and recovery services in the neighborhood.
One of those nonprofits is Torchlight Recovery, which works in Roxbury to connect homeless people with housing and medical resources. Minister Randy Muhammad, Torchlight’s executive director, said Nubian Square has for a long time contended with homelessness in the area, but that the people living on the streets had been largely familiar to residents and business owners in the neighborhood.
“But we’re seeing a new crowd,” Muhammad said.
Overdoses in the blocks around Nubian Square spiked in late 2023, according to a Globe analysis of the last five years of police calls for service in the area. There were 32 overdose calls in the last half of that year, compared to 22 over the same period in 2022 and 12 in 2021. This year, there have been 14 overdose calls from July through mid-October.
The consequences of the clearances at Mass. and Cass did not come as a surprise, Deputy Superintendent Dan Humphreys told the council in October.
“One of our concerns immediately was, ‘Is this going to displace people into the surrounding areas?’ ” Humphreys said.
The department has increased patrols in the corridor from Mass. and Cass to Nubian Square, he said.
