'This Should Have Never Gotten This Bad,' Boston Begins Removing Tents From Mass Avenue And Melnea Cass Boulevard
BOSTON (CBS) -- Workers started to remove tents from the intersection of Mass Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard Monday. It is a hard process for the residents and the people trying to help them.
"I feel like this should have never gotten this bad," said West Street Clinic advocate Diamond O'Connell.
She walked into the Mass and Cass tent city on Monday carrying her own story with her. "It's really important to me because it still hurts, when you are formerly homeless, you remember sleeping in the dirt, the rats going by you, I remember all that you know."
O'Connell now advocates for West Street Clinic's healthcare without wall program.
"I'm down here today to try to get some women and men into shelters and into treatment centers," O'Connell said. "When you've adapted out to something for so many years, that is your home. But the problem is is that it should have never been like that, they should have had shelter."
Tents could be seen slowly being broken down.
Last week, the corner of Theodore Glynn Way and South Hampton was the focus. Now it's clear.
How long will it stay this way?
"I feel the city needs to stand up and stand together as one to take care of this problem because they are going to clean it up and probably move somewhere else or they're going to come back again," O'Connell said.
She feels there are several things that need to be done to make sure a new tent city doesn't pop up elsewhere,
"We need to really address in the city of Boston that we have a homeless problem so bad that we need funding, we need to open up shelters for women, men. We need to get addiction services in. We need to do what we need to do as a city."