Mayor Michelle Wu shares plans for recovery centers and programs after touring Long Island
BOSTON - Two weeks after the city of Boston received a key permit to rebuild a bridge to Long Island, Boston officials and health care providers toured the long abandoned addiction recovery campus hoping to establish a new model of care that's ready to go when the bridge is rebuilt in an anticipated four years.
"It's important for us to get started now and start thinking about the services that we believe we will need in the future," said Boston Public Health Commissioner Dr. Bisola Ojikutu.
The city sees promise for a state of the art public health campus in the buildings and rooms that are now frozen in time. The rooms are dilapidated, there is water and floor damage, abandoned cots and furniture when the old recovery center was suddenly evacuated nearly nine years ago when the access bridge was deemed unsafe.
"We really envision this as less so of a majority overnight emergency shelter place to sleep and that's it and more of that comprehensive campus," said Wu.
And with a substance abuse crisis ever growing in an epicenter known as Mass and Cass, the city sees rehabilitating and reopening Long Island as a public health recovery campus as key.
"Four years is too long, right, we'd love it in a year," said Louis Josephson of Bay Cove Human Services. "But the reality is, it's a big campus, it's an old campus, and we're going to work hard as heck to get it done as fast as possible."
Eleven buildings are slated to be stabilized from roofs, to masonry to HVAC systems with bids now going out and construction anticipated by begin by next spring. The city has been overwhelmed by what has become a greater criminal element on Mass and Cass and how to deal with it. It's a long road head but Long Island is seen as an island of opportunity.
"I think that one of the problems is we don't have enough resources available for people and that's one of the things we're hoping that building Long Island will alleviate," said Ojikutu.
Access to the island is through the city of Quincy, which is appealing the permit, saying rebuilding the bridge is a burden on the environment and neighborhoods. But the Wu Administration hopes to have all permits in place by the end of the year.