Opposition grows to plans to expand Shattuck Hospital

For anyone in JP or in Roslindale who is against this proposal but was all in for similar housing on Morrissey Boulevard, check if you commented here on how evil opposition to supporting housing is. Thanks.

https://www.universalhub.com/2023/bpda-approves-plan-convert-morrissey-b...

We just don’t want you to be, in the words of John Forbes Kerry, to be for something before you were against it.

When the state decided to relocate Shattuck Hospital (from where it has been located in JP since 1954) to the South End literally within shouting distance of Mass and Cass, no one in the South End was asked if this was a good idea.

We were told it was a done deal for a host of reasons but that we would have an opportunity to join with dozens of other neighbors from areas surrounding the campus as well as providers, electeds, and officials in a joint state-community-driven process to explore how this public health campus would be redeveloped to meet our most pressing public health challenges.

It should be noted that the Secretary of Health publicly told the South End that they recognized the imposition the new Shattuck Hospital would have in a location that was already heavily overburdened with services and providers and that they wanted South End neighbors to participate in the redevelopment planning process to help find campus use solutions that would ease the additional burdens they were placing on us as a neighborhood.

We were but a couple of lone voices on an Advisory Group that met for a year plus and ultimately overwhelmingly chose to ensure the Shattuck campus would be redeveloped to address the addiction, recovery, mental health, and supportive housing needs that everyone agreed constitute our greatest public health challenge. Those recommendations were accepted by the Health and Human Services secretariat and then by DCAM the agency that manages all state facilities/properties. The redevelopment plan we all put together is solid, it is focused, it has the right partners, and most importantly it is the right thing to do.

Suggestions that these desperately needed services or this plan should go to some other neighborhood or that any plan for an existing public health campus to continue to serve a public health purpose is somehow "racist" are real mysteries to those of us who worked in public sessions with JP and Franklin Park neighbors and many others who support this redevelopment plan.

To be fair, there are a few folks who have from the very day the hospital move was announced have been opposed to any redevelopment of the campus. Some publicly suggested that trees serve a public health purpose and therefore we should bulldoze any treatment or housing structures and be content that new tree growth will address our public health challenges. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy and some voices in the Garrison Trotter neighborhood have been quite consistent in advancing their view that Shattuck should be returned to open space. But after multiple open public meetings and careful consideration of all the options, that was not the recommendation of the Advisory Group and in my view as one voice on the panel, it was not the right approach to redevelopment of an existing public health facility when we are facing a serious public health crisis. By the way, Franklin Park is 527 acres and the Shattuck Campus is just a 13 acre carve out--a substantial part of which will remain open space in the redevelopment plan.

The South End has been doing its part as a welcoming community in addressing public health challenges for decades. We have more shelters per square inch than any other neighborhood in the city and we have more services offered to the most needy than any other. We were first to offer refuge and treatment in the AIDS crisis, we have done more to host unsheltered homeless than any other city neighborhood by far. No one is trying to move Mass and Cass to the Shattuck Campus (the red herring when proposals for more public health facilities are suggested). But this combined addiction/mental health/homelessness crisis is so large, so insidious, so pervasive, we need help. The South End cannot do it alone, we need help from every neighborhood and are grateful for the enormous support from the JP community. Beyond Shattuck, we will need Long Island to be redeveloped into a Recovery Campus offering soup to nuts services and treatments.

We thank all the state agencies and the redevelopment partners and providers (and rockstars like Sheila Dillon) for their willingness to work tirelessly to find sensible and realistic solutions. We are proud of what we have recommended for Shattuck and we think many others will be too.

Steve Fox
Chair, South End Forum

They are the reason why we have these problems, from the homeless problem to the T not going to places it should.