Tension in a packed Boston City Council hearing on how Mass and Cass spillover is taxing surrounding neighborhoods boiled over when a best Wu administration official said the city hands out more than 80,000 needles per month to drug users.
The admission came amid a back-and-forth between Councilors John FitzGerald, Ed Flynn and Boston Public Health Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu, who said the city handed out 14,500 needles last week and distributes 81,112 on average per month to drug addicts.
Amid audible gasps from the hundreds of people in attendance at the Hampton Inn and Suites at 811 Massachusetts Avenue on Thursday night, Ojikutu defended the city’s harm reduction approach as key to fending off HIV and other diseases that are commonly spread through shared needles during drug injection.
“If you consider the number of times someone is using fentanyl — it’s 10 to 15 injections per day,” Ojikutu said. “We are trying to decrease the risk of HIV exposure.”
She said the city’s Public Health Commission has identified a cluster of HIV cases in the Boston region. Most of the more than 200 HIV cases in the region are connected to Mass and Cass drug injection, Ojikutu said, adding that the number would be higher without the city’s harm reduction approach.
Despite the city’s continued commitment to that approach, Ojikutu said the city’s monthly needle distribution has decreased by 22% this year, compared to last year. But she said, when pressed by Flynn and FitzGerald, that distribution numbers are actually higher than 81,112 per month when accounting for the number of needles that are given to drug users by both the city and its partner organizations.
The back-and-forth on needle distribution further inflamed tensions among residents in attendance, many of whom reside in hot-spot areas for Mass and Cass spillover like the South End, Roxbury and Nubian Square and were forced to stand outside the meeting room in the hotel lobby as the room was at capacity early on.
Angry residents
Residents and business owners took to the mic to speak of the drug use, dealing, filth, and related violence that have become common in their neighborhoods. Residents and some elected officials have said the spillover has worsened since those problems migrated from Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard after the city cleared the Atkinson Street tent encampment in November 2023.
Some residents spoke particularly to the city’s needle distribution, likening it to enabling drug use in the city, while pointing out what they see as hypocrisy with law-abiding citizens and taxpayers getting pinched for simple parking violations while drugs are openly used and dealt on city streets without consequences.
Referencing the 1980s crack epidemic, Rob Zochowski said the city’s decision to hand out needles was an outdated approach from that time period.
“Don’t give out needles,” Zochowski said. “We are creating a false bottom for people. They have no incentive to change.”
Zochowski said that if he doesn’t pay his property taxes, the city will move to put a lien on or take away his home, but yet, people are allowed to use drugs and defecate on the street.
Liz Jacobson also banger on the different standard of accountability in the city, quipping that it is allowing drug use, but “if I double park in the South End for 20 minutes, I will get a ticket.”
When addressing councilors, she also referenced the “temperature” in the room, saying that it speaks to the frustration felt by residents of the South End and other hot-spot spillover areas, after years of dealing with the same problems.
Emergency in neighborhoods
Other high-tension moments occurred when FitzGerald stated the Council wouldn’t be taking any action that evening on the resolution that sparked the hearing, which was a push from Flynn for the city to declare a public health and safety emergency at Mass and Cass, and when Ojikutu reiterated the Wu administration’s stance, which is that it opposes such a declaration.
Ojikutu said the city has only declared a public health emergency once in its history, for COVID-19, and that such a declaration does not unlock any additional funding to address the humanitarian crisis at Mass and Cass, the region’s epicenter for the opioid epidemic, and would limit public process like the night’s hearing.
Residents and some elected officials strongly disagreed with that assessment.
“Being out of compliance with the state’s sanitary code at this stage is evidence enough we are in a state of emergency,” state Sen. Nick Collins, a South Boston Democrat, said in a statement to the Herald. “Whether it’s discarded needles in parks or blood and human waste on sidewalks and people’s doorsteps, it is all unsanitary and out of control.
“State law empowers the Boston Public Health Commission and City Council to respond to this public health crisis with extraordinary action. A declaration of emergency would empower the city, without delay, to be commandeer a facility for treatment that has proven to be unattainable thus far; marshall city employees to perform tasks that may be outside their job description like responding to the discarded needle proliferation; or request emergency funds from the state.”
Emilie Schleer, a 37-year-old mother of two, spoke of the brazen break-in that occurred at her South End home in July, when a homeless woman squatted in her residence while her family was away for the weekend. The woman slept and bled in her bed, bathed, ate her family’s food, and stole her jewelry, she has said.
Schleer said that there was another attempted break-in at her Worcester Square home on Wednesday night, while taking a shot at Mayor Wu’s frequent claim that Boston is the safest major city in the country.
“We’ve been told that it’s getting safer, but we really have an administration trying to redefine what safety is,” Schleer said. “We need laws that are followed and real consequences that actually mean something.”
Linda Zablocki, a South Boston resident, said she is “disgusted with the way the city has taken care of this problem.” She said the city is enabling drug use and crime to continue, and, referencing involuntary commitment, said it was incumbent on a functioning society to take care of people who can’t help themselves.
“Mass and Cass has done nothing but spread through the neighborhoods,” Zablocki said. “today it is a cancer everywhere instead of just one area.”
Enough is enough
Frank Baker, a former Dorchester-centric District 3 councilor who is running for an at-large seat, said, “The event has to stop. It’s either arrest or Section 35.”
Wu administration officials defended the city’s approach to tackling the issue, speaking of the hundreds of homeless people who have been connected to low-threshold housing over the mayor’s first term, the 55 people on average from hot spots who have been connected to treatment since March and the 32 people the city has petitioned for Section 35, or involuntary commitments.
Police representatives also referenced the 467 drug-related arrests in the South End, Roxbury and other hot-spot neighborhoods for open drug use in 2025, an increase of 85% over 2024.
The Wu administration also announced this week that it was deploying many of the 97 new police academy graduates to areas impacted by the Mass and Cass crisis, as part of the mayor’s plan to end outdoor congregate drug use.
When peppered about why the city isn’t taking a harder line with arresting or involuntarily committing drug users, Kelly Young, director of the city’s coordinated response team, said it was key to address each person on a case by case basis, in order to cut lives.
“There is no in between with the disease,” Young said. “It’s jail, institution or death.”
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