Roxbury-01/31/2024 Boston Mayor Michelle Wu(left) and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey pause to look at the Army cots set up on the gym floor as State and local officials toured the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex Wednesday. The facility will house over 300 migrants. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff (metro)
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the overflow site for migrant families at a Roxbury recreation center is quickly reaching its 400-person capacity, two weeks after it was opened by the state.
Wu said most of the families who had been sleeping at Logan International Airport were brought in right away when the state-owned Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex was converted into a safety-net site on Jan. 31, and now families from other temporary housing situations including a Revere hotel are being brought in.
Seventy-five migrant children were registered with the Boston Public Schools the first weekend that the Roxbury site was open, and will be in “cohorts” together aimed at having the same networks, support and “extra dedicated resources around multilingual learning,” Wu said Wednesday on a Java with Jimmy podcast.
“This whole situation is a temporary spot,” Wu said. “I think the state heard loud and clear that the pool is necessary for community, for all the multigenerational activity that happens in the neighborhood.”
Gov. Maura Healey has committed to closing the site by May 31, after criticism from the Roxbury community, and the city’s mayor, who said taking away a significant resource from an underserved community was “painfully familiar.”
Wu said Wednesday that the impact to recreational programs that ran out of the facility was “not ideal” and that the city is still trying to find a more stable home for them over the next couple of months.
The mayor noted that the city had been working with the state to identify other buildings that could have worked better as an overflow site for migrants, and looked at 15, but ultimately the decision came down to the Cass Center already being fully equipped with showers and bathrooms for the families who had been at the airport.
She also pointed to the strong police and security presence at the site, both for people in the community and “more importantly for the families inside” because of the heightened attention on migrant overflow sites and groups, including from out of state, that have demonstrated outside the facilities.
Wu said, for example, that a white supremacist group showed up in Quincy when the state opened a safety-net shelter there, “just to be outside and cause a ruckus.”
A spokesperson for the governor said security is being provided by state and Boston police and a private security vendor, a contract with whom has not been finalized.
“While State Police maintain jurisdiction of the state property, state and local police regularly work together in locations with adjacent jurisdictions like this to ensure the safety of all,” the Healey spokesperson said.
