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Eating a little crow on crime
By Rob Haneisen
Thu Sep 27, 2007, 05:25 PM EDT
Framingham -When SMOC closed its wet shelter on Irving Street, many heralded the move as a cure to much of the downtown Framingham crime problem.
I did not. I believed that closing the shelter would actually create more problems. I figured that discontinuing a shelter for homeless drug and alcohol abusers would simply kick them to the street each night where they would likely get into trouble or die from exposure during the winter.
Given the statistics released by Police Chief Steven Carl last week, my suspicion was wrong.
In fact, since the wet shelter closed, crime has dropped by 27 percent in the last 10 months downtown.
Between October 2006, when the shelter closed, and August 2007, police arrested 603 people, a 26.8 percent drop, the chief told selectmen last week.
The statistics include 73 homeless people arrested from October to August, a drop of almost 60 percent from the same period a year earlier, when police arrested 181 homeless people downtown for various crimes.
"We've removed a lot of the nuisance from downtown," said the chief. "There's been a significant positive impact."
I always wondered where the people would go once the shelter would close. SMOC provided housing at 3 Merchant Road (far removed from downtown) but the wet shelter was meant to serve as a catch-all for those who needed a place to stay that night. Moving or closing the shelter, I believed, would do nothing to erase the problem crime associated with it.
Wow, was I wrong.
Of course, we'll have to keep track of the crime stats to see if this 10 month period was an aberration or directly linked to the wet shelter. Either way it would be great if this starts to improve the downtown's public image.
In case you missed it, the whole image factor is important.
"We have to get rid of that image that a lot of the Framingham people have of the downtown area. That's been our biggest bugaboo," said Framingham Downtown Renaissance Committee member and real estate agent Barbara Vincent.
Vincent's comments came during last week's meeting and tour of condos at the old Dennison complex. Those condos priced between $254,900 and $608,000 aren't exactly flying off the market.
"We have real estate agents in town who won't come and show these. And I say it's really not fair to make a decision for your potential buyer that they wouldn't want this area. Bring them down here. Let them make the decision themselves."
In the meantime, expect the condos to see some action from Boston folks who look at Framingham as a bargain near mass transit.
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Town officials this week announced they will be hosting not one, but two forums on social service agencies operating in town.
First up is a forum set for Oct. 3 to discuss the Advocates group home for five people with Prader-Willi syndrome. The move by Advocates has been met with some stiff resistance from residents on William J. Heights.
Then there will be a townwide forum on Oct. 18 to discuss (how many times has this been hashed out?) the impact of social services in Framingham. The latter forum came after 80 people signed a petition presented to selectmen.
Didn't the town already do this with the PILOT Committee meetings? Didn't that long process research various aspects of social service agencies in town, their expansion and some of the effects that expansion has had on the town?
We've been down this road before, so what's the point? About the only thing new since the PILOT meetings as that the town actually has a social services liaison in Alexis Silver. Beyond that, I can see this being a chance for neighbors and residents upset about group homes or other operations to state their case; for those who run the agencies to attempt to explain why they do what they do, where they do it; and for town officials to explain that there is not much they can do according to the way the laws, specifically the Dover Amendment, is written.
Is that useful? Maybe to some. Maybe its just a way to keep lines of communication open. Here's hoping for something constructive to come out of the forum.
What further puzzles me is why the town is having two meetings.
I'll give all credit to Town Meeting member Tom O'Neil here because he was dead center on when he said, "You're diluting the effort we made. I don't think it serves any purpose to divide this into little neighborhood issues. It defeats the whole purpose of having a public forum."
O'Neil was one of the people behind the petition for a community wide forum. He's also upset that the Woodcrest Acres folks will get to go first on Oct. 3.
Something I hope that will be discussed, preferably by a town official, is some of the reasons why social service agencies locate group homes and other operations in Framingham. There is no conspiracy theory with some of the smaller, affluent neighboring towns at work. It's simple logic that Framingham is the biggest and cheapest option going for non-profits when it comes to finding housing. Framingham's access to transportation, jobs and services is what makes it unavoidably the destination for may social service agencies. If there were an inordinate number of group homes in say, Sudbury, that would not make sense.
If there could ever be found a way for the town to recoup some tax revenue lost by housing so many off-the-rolls properties it might make some people feel a little better. But I doubt there's much progress to be gained in getting an agency to make voluntary payments through a PILOT.
(Rob Haneisen is a metro editor for the MetroWest Daily News. He can be reached at rhaneis@cnc.com or 508-626-3882.)
