Give Roxbury back its recreation center
Louis Elisa has seen humanitarian crises from the rubble up.
The worst, he said, was the 1999 earthquake near Istanbul that killed 17,479 people, many as they slept. That’s when Elisa was a regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
He’s an expert in precisely what is unfolding in Massachusetts today as Gov. Maura Healey seizes the state-owned Melnea A. Cass Recreation Complex as a temporary overflow site for migrant families sleeping at Logan Airport.
It’s not what he would do, he told the Herald.
“I’m in support of housing those migrants, but not at that facility,” Elisa said. “This has not been thought through. This is not the best spot. You’re going to stuff up to 380 to 400 people in The Cass with four bathroom stalls? That’s not intelligent. There are alternatives that would work a lot better.”
He’s suggesting the Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain. Plans for redevelopment of the hospital are in the works, but the migrant crisis calls for quick action.
But did Healey’s people reach out to Elisa? No.
He was good enough to work for the Clinton administration but apparently not Healey’s inner circle.
Elisa worked for FEMA in warravaged places such as Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia. He was with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights after Hurricane Katrina crippled New Orleans. He’s in Boston now, and his phone is not ringing, and that’s what’s wrong with this migrant crisis.
His work on the Boston Black COVID-19 Coalition deserves praise and is proof that the Roxbury community needs a voice. Healey’s plan to relocate Logan migrants to this recreation center, pushing out local kids and programs, is just big-footing the neighborhood.
Elisa said the governor doesn’t like the “optics” of letting everyone see migrants sleeping on the floor at Logan, so her knee-jerk reaction is to stick it to Roxbury.
It simply isn’t fair. Healey should reverse course and move the migrants to the Shattuck today.
“This has created a crisis. You don’t want to put people in a gymnasium,” Elisa said, recalling the terrible idea of using the Louisiana Superdome during Katrina, turning it into a hellhole.
“You have alternatives. Use them,” he added. “These people need more than three meals a day. Hygiene, sanitation, and security all matter. The Shattuck is a better spot or the Brockton Hospital. They are places you can go without disrupting programs.”
He’s calling on the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) to do more than brace for nor’easters and floods.
“There’s got to be comprehensive thought. You can’t be a stovepipe,” Elisa said of the governor’s lack of communication with the city.
The Boston City Council is feeling the same isolation, with At-Large Councilor Erin Murphy calling for a briefing on the state seizing the Roxbury rec center back.
This haphazard approach to the never-ending border mess exposes the lack of planning from the Oval Office to the governor’s Corner Office.
“The state is taking care of the migrants, but who is taking care of us?” a Roxbury resident asked on a Zoom forum Monday night. That’s a damn good question.
The governor needs to step out and answer it today and admit Roxbury’s gym belongs to the kids and community.