How political leaders decided to take over a Roxbury recreation center to shelter migrants

For Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, the urgency to find shelter space for migrants rose to emergency levels in mid-January. While the state had been looking for sites to shelter families on the waitlist for its family shelter system for some time, images of dozens of families sleeping on the floor at Logan Airport were disturbing — and signaled a humanitarian crisis for Massachusetts.

State and city officials began searching for a temporary shelter space in earnest the week of Jan. 18, and on Wednesday they made a controversial move: temporarily closing the Melnea Cass Recreational Complex to local residents, so migrant families could move in.

Interviews with three officials involved in the talks, community leaders and a public meeting recording show how quickly the state made the decision — despite the concerns of the mayor, local leaders and residents.

State and city staffers were in nearly constant communication over the past two weeks, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They considered about 15 locations and toured at least five, including Suffolk Downs in East Boston and the West Roxbury Education Complex. Eventually, logistics such as accessible bathrooms, venue size and comfort had the state leaning toward “the Cass,” as the popular sports center is called.

The state owns the building. But that wasn’t going to make this any easier for the neighborhood to swallow. To gain support for the plan, the state reached out to three Roxbury political leaders: City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, state Rep. Chynah Tyler and state Sen. Liz Miranda. The three organized a virtual community listening session on the night of Friday, Jan. 26, inviting residents and stakeholders to log in. The governor and the mayor attended the three-hour Zoom session, which gathered about 250 people and ran past 9 p.m.

“The governor is not oblivious that she's coming to a neighborhood that's historically disenfranchised in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Boston,” Fernandes Anderson said in a later interview. “People are going to push back.”

The community did just that at the meeting, as did the mayor.

“It is also, as I understand, the first ask for taking offline a community asset — that was specifically designed for community programming — to be used in this way. And that I take very seriously,” Wu said, according to a recording of the Zoom meeting. “For me, that has been a big sticking point.”

Wu said she empathized with the local residents who were losing the center for a period of time, noting that her own kids had participated in a track club there. She said the conversation about closing the center temporarily could have been eased with more information, like exactly how long it would be used as a shelter and where all the groups that use the site could find alternative space.

Wu said at the meeting she felt the governor was sincere in expressing concern about using the Roxbury center. But, she said, “The problem we are trying to solve for right now is that there is an emergency at Logan Airport, right, if we are honest.”

WBUR has reported that on some nights 100 to 200 people were sleeping a Logan, and "they need to have their humanity recognized,” Wu added.

What she’s worried about now: “What about the next 200 families who arrive?"

Wu urged “all communities” to help come up with solutions, not just Boston. But even as she seemed to hold out hope for the possibility the state could take a different direction, by Monday morning, the deal was done.

In a Jan. 29 letter obtained by WBUR, Healey thanked the Roxbury representatives for organizing the Friday “listening session.” She wrote that it was “important to have a dialogue directly with community members and provide an opportunity to express their thoughts, ask questions and be heard.”

And she announced that the state was preparing to use the recreation center as a temporary, emergency safety-net site. She said the center could house up to 400 people and that the state would close the shelter by May 31, do some site renovations and reopen the center and its swimming pool to the public by June 20.

On the same day that letter went out, the mayor on WBUR’s Radio Boston said the decision to take over a community asset in a part of the city that has long struggled was “very painful, and it’s painfully familiar.”

The next day, Tuesday, Wu went to Washington, D.C. and met with officials at the Department of Homeland Security to press for more help and resources to handle the increase in immigrants arriving in Massachusetts. On Wednesday, she was part of a major press event, touring the Roxbury facility with Healey and a large group of local politicians and community and faith leaders.

At the press conference, Healey told reporters, “We're here today because we really don't have a choice.” She and others continued to stress they are pressuring federal officials to take action to mitigate the strain on the state's shelter system.

Healey spokeswoman Karissa Hand said in a statement: "When the administration identified the Cass Recreation Center as a viable option for a safety-net site last week, we reached out to the City and Roxbury elected officials to discuss the proposal and how we can work together to support the community." After participating in the community meeting, Hand said, "we incorporated their feedback into our plans. This is an emergency situation and we needed to act quickly to ensure families had a safe and warm place to stay and weren't sleeping at Logan Airport, and we appreciate the community coming together to make this possible."

To benefit the community, the state pledged to return the center to the community with upgrades and promised to use local vendors for food, laundry and transportation services to boost local businesses.

“I really do believe that the governor's intentions are pure. Obviously, her hands were tied,” Fernandes Anderson said.

But some are not happy with how fast the process went.

“It's just a broad level of disrespect for our community that we encounter on a regular basis and this issue with the immigrants is just the latest chapter,” said Sadiki Kambon, director of the Black Community Information Center, who attended at the community listening session. “I'm sympathetic to the immigrants and their status, but we have a lot of other issues out here that need to be addressed.”

He is advocating for walk-in health care clinics in Nubian Square, which is a few blocks from the recreation center, and recently lost a Walgreens pharmacy. He wants a meeting with Healey and Wu and is looking for them to declare the boundaries of Nubian Square, from Mass. Ave all the way up to Quincy and Warren streets, a health desert.

The state’s emergency shelter system is currently housing 7,500 families, about half of them immigrants. The state says it has shelters in 90 communities, in hotels, motels and three overflow shelter sites in Revere, Cambridge and Quincy. More than 600 families are on a waiting list for shelter.

At the Wednesday press conference, City Councilor Fernandes Anderson said the community wants to help the migrants, but that it also has been asked to sacrifice a great deal. "The governor's doing a very difficult thing," she said. "I'm quite sure the governor knew that Roxbury was going to give her smoke."