The corridor around Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard at the edge of Roxbury and the South End — one of Boston’s roughest areas, known widely as Methadone Mile — has deteriorated during the pandemic. It has become more crowded with people who are homeless and those suffering from addiction; also more violent, grimy, and forbidding, a procession of despair and disability, a place where too many live, suffer, and die.

While city life has largely receded over the past six months, the crisis here has only worsened, a fact city officials attribute to the virus.

Since March, many daytime services and places for those with addiction to receive treatment have closed, as have many public buildings and businesses where homeless people previously could spend their days or use the bathrooms. The virus has led to an increase in releases from jails and prisons, with many former inmates having nowhere to go. It has also produced a surge in people living on the streets, with many homeless people choosing to avoid the cramped quarters of shelters, where, in some cases, more a third of the guests tested positive for the virus last spring.