It’s a story that Bostonians need to remember. And that people who have moved here in the past two years should hear, however uncomfortable it makes us all. In October 2014, more than 700 people were ordered to evacuate the shelters and facilities on Long Island, a relative humble oasis that was home for many on the margins of society. Though hardly a vacation destination, the picturesque stretch in the heart of Boston Harbor was more than the simple sum of several rehabilitation centers and halfway houses, and served as a critical hub for those services, which frequently coordinated in both unofficial and prescribed capacities. With the bridge between the mainland and Long Island condemned, that network was splintered, with some components disappearing altogether, and others surfacing beyond the reach of Boston’s homeless population. To quote a Boston University medical student who volunteered in the clinic on Long Island: “We saw how the city did not replace the services lost for these people in the time that it should have happened, and how it really unnerved a lot of the injustice that was already occurring.”
The insult was compounded last month, with a development perhaps best summarized by a July 25 Boston Globe headline: “Farm that once benefited the homeless now run by fast-food chain.” Straight out of the You Have Got To Be Kidding Me handbook, Boston officials gifted a city-owned farm on Long Island, which was formerly used to train and feed the city’s homeless, to the burger outfit b.good for two years. The local press appeared to notice, some threw shade on social media, but for the most part people then forgot again. This comes as no surprise, as there is certainly a grab bag of injustices—even locally—that deserve attention. But in the interest of reminding readers that the promise of Long Island is still a life or death issue for many who were sent packing, here are some cogent testimonies from advocates who spoke at Monday’s Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee speakout at City Hall, where the group asked for “Mayor Walsh [to] return vital health and healing human services on Long Island including the Serving Ourselves farm and substance abuse recovery services,” and for “Long Island’s legacy [to] continue to be for the health and wellbeing of the people of Greater Boston, not for the use or profit of private companies.”
Sara Riegler (former manager at Serving Ourselves farm)
I’m going to give you just a little bit of background on what the farm was, and on what was lost. It was a 2.5-acre certified organic vegetable farm. We grew about 25,000 pounds of vegetables each year and distributed them throughout the city. About 50 percent of the vegetables went right back into the city’s shelter system and were prepared into meals, and the other 50 percent was divided … between two different farmer’s markets …
At any given time we employed between five and ten homeless adults in a full-time paid position. They were given a permanent bed out on Long Island and all their meals, and the idea was that it was a jobs training program. It gave participants a few months of their lives to take a breather and recover from the stress of living on the streets, or from addiction, or from coming out of incarceration, whatever their particular story was … They were given a caseworker to work on getting permanent housing …
That’s what we did year to year—the farm was out there since the late-’90s and it grew steadily. We had three greenhouses, a tractor, and a bunch of equipment that was paid for by the Boston Public Health Commission and by fundraising from private donors. All that came to a halt in October 2014 and hasn’t been replaced …
The last almost two years there has been talk about maybe re-opening the farm on the mainland, and about how it’s valuable to the city, and has to re-start at some point, and then fast-forward to this year and suddenly the b.good fast food chain is out there with free access to all of that infrastructure and farmland …
Michael Kane (organizer with Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee)
The city made the decision to evacuate 265 people in recovery. They had food, there was a farm out there, they didn’t have to leave instantly. What did the mayor do? He put them on buses and took them over the bridge that had just been condemned. People left their meds, their ID papers, their clothing, and the city didn’t even realize that was a problem until agitation by the Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee six weeks later …
We know people died … Don’t tell me [the closing of Long Island] wasn’t related to the jump in opioid-related deaths in Boston dating from October 2014 …
There is no excuse to not reopen these [Long Island facilities] now. They have these things called boats, they’ve been around for thousands of years. We asked the mayor’s people why not reopen with a boat, and there was a series of excuses. One was, ‘What about emergencies?’ Well, there are two ambulance boats. And there was a medical clinic out on Long Island. They said, ‘What about fires?’ Well, there’s a fire station. They said all of these excuses. The last one was, ‘The state won’t let them do it.’ Well, that turned out to be as big a lie as the lie that the state made them tear the bridge down. We talked to people at the state. Senator [Jamie] Eldridge said flat-out that was not true, and that the state never said to not re-open the facilities on Long Island. The city never submitted a plan like the one we are demanding today to reopen these facilities.
John Lerner (former Long Island resident, organizer with Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee)
[Speaking of the particular program on Long Island that helped him] You go in there, you get clean and sober, you pay 30 percent of your income to rent. After you get out of housing you get 100 percent of your money back that you put into it … So I got into that program, and not only did I do all that, but I decided there was another step—I went back to college, because I knew that if I was going to get clean and sober and get housing I wasn’t just going to sit around on the couch all day. That wasn’t me … I graduated and technically I’m a chef today …
That’s my good news, and I’m happy about that. What I’m not happy about is that the program that was available to me on Long Island … is no longer there for the next person walking in my shoes. It was taken away. It’s not right. I had a friend on the island who disappeared after it was shut down. February 19 of this year I found her—she died on the street …
This is not what we expect and are looking for from government officials. Housing and food are a birthright—it shouldn’t be about how much money you have in your pocket and the paycheck that you get every week. Housing is for everybody, not just the rich. I hope you’re listening Marty, because that’s what was taken from us and we need it back.
Aubrey Esthers (former Long Island resident, organizer with Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee)
People die left and right. My friends are passing away. It’s awful walking down Mass Ave and seeing people who aren’t able to get into a detox, and who aren’t able to get into a long-term program because Long Island was shut down. I personally benefitted from Long Island and I hate to think that these folks aren’t going to be able to receive the same benefits that I did … We need to keep fighting, we need to keep speaking up. If we don’t, who will?
Nino Brown (teacher, member of Mass Action Against Police Brutality)
When I’m not organizing I work with second graders, and many of my students are homeless, many are houseless, and many are housing insecure. The issues and problems that come along with that, the trauma is brought into the classroom. So I stand in solidarity with all those who put their bodies and their spirits on the front lines fighting against what we know to be neoliberalism—the privatization of public resources and land …
We need solidarity because that’s the only weapon we have. Injury to one is an injury to all … The fight against homelessness is one in the same with the fight against police brutality because the majority of the people who the police brutalize are poor people, working people, homeless people, houseless people. If they can do this to the people at the bottom, they can do this to anybody.
A Queens, NY native who came to New England in 2004 to earn his MA in journalism at Boston University, Chris Faraone is the editor and co-publisher of DigBoston and a co-founder of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. He has published several books including 99 Nights with the 99 Percent, and has written liner notes for hip-hop gods including Cypress Hill, Pete Rock, Nas, and various members of the Wu-Tang Clan.
