Just did a tour in DC after Touring Boston , DC is really bad homeless drugs scary

[Anonymous]

It’s sadly the racial makeup of the two cities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were in Boston visiting family last month and fid a tour encountered no homeless no drunks or drugs and felt very safe and it was clean.

We Did a tour in DC today , and it was a night and day difference. Homeless people everywhere many were very aggressive trying to run up to our group and shouting. One pelted us with rocks when we wouldn't give him money. Some were strung out passed out in front of some nice restaurants. We also came across this right next to the police station . Wtf is going on with DC. Someone needs to crack down on the homeless in DC , these aren't nice homeless that mind their own business they are aggressive and scary. We also saw a drug deal right by the white house! Why is Boston so much nicer than DC our capital? Who is holding the mayor accountable, 99% of the problems in DC would go away if vagrancy and drug laws were enforced. We need to clean up the streets of DC like yesterday.

I was just in Boston. You must be blind if you do not see homeless in Boston. They are all over the place- begging for money, sleeping on the benches, drug addicts passed out in the park, etc. The thing is most of them are white so you most likely did not view them as a threat.

[Anonymous]

There’s an escort living in Foxhall Crescent. No part of DC is safe anymore

[Anonymous]

Newsflash.

Homeless people are mentally ill, and/or on drugs and pissed off.

[Anonymous]

Boston. July 2023
Downtown Crossing, the Boston Common, Mass & Cass, Quincy Market, parts of the Back Bay, North Station, Copley all have plenty of homeless folks. Everywhere really. Needles, condoms on the ground. Requests for donations. Lots going on.
If you confined yourself to a block here or there maybe you wouldn't see urban issues but I wouldn't call it a tour. It's a city.

[Anonymous]

Continuing ... People shooting up in public. No shame or fear.

I will say that you're not always overwhelmed with the smell of weed. Just the effects of mental illness & synthetic opioid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have noticed this, too, specifically about Boston.

Without turning this into the 14th "DC homeless fentanyl Tenley sucks!" thread of the week ...

... does anyone know why Boston seemingly alone among large cities doesn't have the Night of the Living Dead, meth zombie encampments ? I mean, even TEXAS / Gov. Abbott big cities now have this problem (despite their willingness to ship ppl out on a Greyhound and lock up everyone for everything)

I’m from MA. Because we won’t put up with that sh*t. Those we elected would be out on their a$$

See previous post. You too are full of shit. Boston has a worse homeless problem than DC - fact and not opinion.

Cite? Anyone have sone actual numbers? Otherwise it’s hard to rake any of you seriously no matter how sure of yourself you sound.

[Anonymous]

I had rocks thrown at me by a group of middle school aged kids in Miami. I lost my mind yelling at them and I am sure I looked like the crazy person.

It was a very visceral, fight or flight reaction to physical assault. If it had been a large adult throwing rocks instead of a group of kids, I might have reacted by running away. Hard to say. But until you're in that situation, it's hard to know how you'd react.

[Anonymous]

*take

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have noticed this, too, specifically about Boston.

Without turning this into the 14th "DC homeless fentanyl Tenley sucks!" thread of the week ...

... does anyone know why Boston seemingly alone among large cities doesn't have the Night of the Living Dead, meth zombie encampments ? I mean, even TEXAS / Gov. Abbott big cities now have this problem (despite their willingness to ship ppl out on a Greyhound and lock up everyone for everything)

My relatives told me Boston forced all the poor people to move out in the 90s

This is probably true, but basically Massachusetts is the best state on almost any measure of social well-being. Across the board in so many categories.

False

No, this is true. Health, education, etc. If you ask someone who looks at state level data a lot (which isn’t that useful in most cases but we do it because of government), you can pretty much count on Alabama and Mississippi to be in the bottom five of everything and Massachusetts to be top five.

The über wealthy who primarily live in and around Boston skew statewide data. There are parts of Massachusetts, especially in the central and western parts of the state, that aren't much better off than the Deep South.

School funding is still way better in rural Massachusetts compared to most districts in the south.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have noticed this, too, specifically about Boston.

Without turning this into the 14th "DC homeless fentanyl Tenley sucks!" thread of the week ...

... does anyone know why Boston seemingly alone among large cities doesn't have the Night of the Living Dead, meth zombie encampments ? I mean, even TEXAS / Gov. Abbott big cities now have this problem (despite their willingness to ship ppl out on a Greyhound and lock up everyone for everything)

My relatives told me Boston forced all the poor people to move out in the 90s

This is probably true, but basically Massachusetts is the best state on almost any measure of social well-being. Across the board in so many categories.

False

I mean it pretty much is. Ther schools can go toe to toe with the best schools in Scandinavia and Asia.

Maybe in the rich suburbs, but the dying mill towns have awful schools, meth problems, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boston has a long history of segregation going back to the 1690s at least so this would be my guess

Massachusetts outlawed segregation in schools in 1855, which I believe was relatively early. By the time of Brown, more states had outlawed segregation than required it at the state level, but I believe the 1855 Massachusetts desegregation predates most of them.

There was a lot of upheaval over forced busing, but forced busing is a more complex issue (people like Biden opposed it, and it doesn't seem to have much support these days).

Yes, but Massachusetts conveniently uses centuries-old town and city boundaries to segregate and pen minorities and poverty into specific locations. The schools in those select towns and cities aren't technically segregated; it's the towns and cities themselves. Doesn't take much to look at places like Springfield, Holyoke, Southbridge, Lawrence, and Brockton and recognize the stark demographic differences, huge disparities in wealth, and school performance compared to surrounding towns.

Basically all of the.NE uses the twin system. But I’m not sure your examples are good ones. I lived in Brockton and that whole region is depressed — there’s no nice town adjacent to Brockton. And Holyoke isn’t a particularly clear cut example either — it has folks at both end of the spectrum and, again, that whole region or Massachusetts is depressed since the mills closed. There are just a couple of towns (Amherst and Northampton) that are propped up by the colleges that own or owned much of the real estate. Ever since the mills closed in western Mass, it’s been depressed.
PS for folks that are now 100% remote there are some great deals to be had with gorgeous old houses in Western Mass!

But none of this answers the original question — I think the answer is that encampments make little sense in Boston where it is very cold and snowy for much of the year. Massachusetts also has a entitlement to shelter for families so families are all provided shelter,. I think they also still have more disabled /elderly housing projects—I don’t know if DC has any of those left. DC knocked down so many of the projects.

+1. And the thing is, it’s not like running schools at the county level is the perfect system either. Just look at all the complaints on this board about how MCPS is “too big.” I’ve lived in both types of school districts and there are advantages/disadvantages to both. And despite the benefits of pooling resources at the county level, there is still a huge disparity in student performance between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the county for MoCo, Fairfax, etc.