Wu wants rec centers kept for kids
Mayor Michelle Wu is standing firm in her stance that the state-run Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury is not an appropriate site for a temporary overflow shelter for migrants and that other cities and towns in the state need to step up in the crisis.
“We should not be using community centers for migrant shelter,” Wu told reporters after an unrelated event at City Hall yesterday. “The surrounding community in Roxbury and the local leaders who are involved came to the table and acknowledged how big of a sacrifice this would be, one that no other community has been asked to shoulder at all across Massachusetts.”
She added that “because it would be temporary, and because it would address a pressing emergency that everybody felt compelled to do something about with babies, pregnant women and families sleeping on the ground at Logan Airport, this community stepped up and said ‘We will once again do what no one else is doing.’”
Wu’s comments are similar to the ones she provided late last month, on the day Gov. Maura Healey confirmed her administration would move forward with the plan to convert the Cass center into a temporary overflow shelter for migrants who had been spending nights at Logan Airport.
The center, as of last week, was quickly reaching its 400-person capacity, Wu said. But a spokesperson from the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities told the Herald yesterday that 100 individuals were being housed at the Cass.
Wu alluded to the neighborhood’s willingness to turn over the recreational center, operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, to migrants stemming from Healey’s “firm commitment” that the shelter will close by May 31 and plan to make the facility “brand new.”
The mayor said the city expects the facility’s pool, showers and bathrooms will be renovated and staffing increased. Prior to the shelter, community groups had to scale back its programming and time slots due to staffing shortages, Wu said.