Morrissey Boulevard hotel could become affordable apartments aimed at helping people get out of homelessness

For all of you hoping for an MBTA station in Neponset.

This stretch of tracks right here was the best place for it. Not the rotary, not Victory Road, not Port Norfolk, right here.

Owing that the platform would be on the water side of the tracks, you would still need access and buses can't fit under Conley Street. This would have been the place for buses and drop offs and for elevators to the the platforms.

PS - This is the site of the last non-hotel Howard Johnson's in Boston.

in the 00s, I had the great privilege of studying with Sir Geoffrey Hill at BU in a team-taught consortium class. We read Simone Weil, among others, but I will never forget the insistence Hill put upon Gravity and Grace.

A converted Comfort Inn is no one's solution to homelessness, but anyone complaining about it without a better solution (in this context, and I imagine there are lots of better solutions) is asking us to consider that suffering does not already exist and that there are better things we already have.

The plan my neighbors have been vilifying says that the first floor will be office space for supportive services of the residents.

The comments on Next Door have been just bizarre. The irony is that my neighbors don't understand that no permission is needed to fill up a hotel with homeless people. The problem here is that the Pine Street wants to increase the transparency and effectiveness of placing homeless people there by making it a professional residence for mobility challenged homeless people. The first 50 will be people already placed in Dorchester by Pine Street that need an elevator building.

My neighbors are living in terror of criminals shuffling over the pedestrian bridge with their walkers and wheelchairs scattering needles wherever they go.

On 10/26, I attended the second community meeting where the project was presented. It was held at the Murphy School gymnasium and about 200 people attended, including many from outside of the Pope Hill’s neighborhood. Since much of the audience already knew about the project and had attended the previous meeting, the presentation was short with more time left for Q&A.

I had never been to a community meeting quite like it. Hardly anyone in attendance (over 95% white) seemed interested in hearing the details and nuances about what is being proposed. The presenters of the project were clear (or trying to be when able to talk) in explaining that this was not a temporary homeless shelter but permanent supportive housing which involves background check, rent payments, an older crowd (57 years old on average), 24/7 security and staff and long term residents. Almost everyone who spoke at that meeting (more ranting than questioning) kept comparing the proposal to what’s happening in the Melnea Cass area. The more outrageous the argument the more applause it received from most of the audience. The presidents of Pope’s Hill association and other neighborhood and local politicians who spoke (Councilor Frank Baker and State Rep Jim Hunt) also expressed strong oppositions from the start and did little to bring moderation or balance to the debate.

The project reps tried their best to address the concerns, but it was clearly falling on deaf ears for 90% of the audience. Only two attendees bravely spoke in favor of the proposal -or tried to- only to be quickly interrupted and heckled at by dozens of people.

This was NIMBY on steroids; "We all want to help these people but this is just not the right place for it" was the most polite version. The irony is that hardly anyone lives within sight of 900 Morrissey as it is surrounded by train tracks (4), a high-speed boulevard (6 lanes) and a huge Extra Space Storage.

Here is the link to the picture of a flyer that the meeting organizers were distributing. Only a few people cared to take one, let alone read it.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tjBNPx8QRxxHethZ7