The city reopened its ‘comfort station’ in the area of Mass. and Cass.

With the state-wide lockdown, individuals living unsheltered found public restrooms closed to them and the services they relied on altered or shuttered. As a result, residents of the South End and Roxbury experienced an increase in incidents of human waste and refuse left on private and public property. As the pandemic surged, reports of improperly discarded needles flooded the city’s 3-1-1 system. 

Now, residents of the neighborhoods are bracing for seeing worsening impacts from the opioid epidemic with the arrival of warmer weather, which in recent years has seen more people navigating substance use disorder, mental health issues, and homelessness arriving in the area to seek help from service providers clustered around “Mass & Cass,” the stretch of city blocks known disparagingly for years as “Methadone Mile.”