It's easy for us eastern MA types to be overly focused on Boston. Here's hoping that the upcoming gubernatorial campaign might bring some much-needed focus on other parts of the state.
- promoted by david
A couple of weeks ago, in a discussion about urban issues, I made the statement that the state was resettling poor people from Eastern Massachusetts to cities in Western Massachusetts. I don’t think that people actually believed my statement because it seemed so incredible.
The Boston Globe published an article today outlining this phenomenon. The bulk of the article is reserved for Boston.com subscribers, but the key line remains available for everyone to read:
The demand for shelter is so great that the state has been temporarily sending homeless families from Boston to motels in Western Massachusetts, although state officials said many have been relocated back again, closer to home.
People wonder why so-called Gateway Cities are not faring as well as Boston. This is one of many reasons – poor people are actually being shipped out of Boston by the state and sent to other cities. No state aid is accompanying them. This particular article mentions a woman from Roxbury sent to Greenfield.
I don’t know how often this occurs, but it was also reported in the Springfield Republican in September 2001, in an article describing how 120 homeless families were sent from Boston to Springfield.
I get the sense that many people here don’t think that things are that bad in this state. They are. Step outside of Boston and the suburbs, go to Lawrence, Holyoke, Springfield, Chicopee, North Adams. Poverty is highly concentrated, poor people have been pooling in certain communities due to various state policies, Proposition 2.5 being a main one (after all, this was the intent of the law, to allow people to “sort themselves” – in Grover Nordquists own words).
Although Deval Patrick did have some focus on urban issues during his time in office, so much more needs to be done. Massachusetts is not comprised of just gentrified Boston and its wealthy suburbs. A lot of people are being left out, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a plan to help, other than chiding people when they don’t get a college degree.