Drug use by homeless people has increased in a public park in the Davis Square neighborhood of Somerville in recent months, two city councilors said.
Parents who use Seven Hills Park have expressed concern about how to prevent their small children from picking up needles from the ground and whether it’s safe to sit on the grass, city councilor Judy Pineda Neufeld said during the Somerville City Council meeting on Thursday, August 22.
“I’m concerned about the open and widespread drug use in the park,” Neufeld said during the meeting.
Neufeld said other parents at the day care she uses for her toddler son ask her every day about needles in Seven Hill Park, which she described as “my back yard.”
She said she and others have noticed what she called a “sharp increase of verbal harassment,” and she said some people have reported physical harassment.
“So there are fewer safe spaces for our community members to utilize in and around Davis Square in the recent months,” Neufeld said.
Some of her neighbors have reported seeing people using drugs in their back yard or passed out in their back yard, she said.
Another city councilor, Lance Davis, said he has seen firsthand evidence of the problem.
“As I was standing there last week during my outdoor office hours talking to a person, one of my constituents, about this challenge, I was literally looking at a needle, right 10 feet behind her, at the edge of the path. It just emphasizes the real safety issue that this presents,” Davis said.
He noted that a box the city installed that is designed to collect used needles has been broken into.
Somerville is left-leaning – current President Joe Biden took Somerville over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 by 88 to 10 percent. Neufeld and Davis both chose their words carefully when describing people who drugs in the park, using the term “unhoused” for homeless people and frequently hesitating while formulating how to describe their concerns.
“This isn’t about our unhoused population in the park,” Neufeld said. “It’s really about ensuring that we can both take a compassionate public health approach toward our unhoused neighbors and ensure that there’s a safe environment for our community members to use the park.”
Davis expressed gratitude that the mayor’s administration and Somerville police have taken what he called a “compassionate” approach.
Davis also said residents who have complained to him with an expectation that he would recommend having police remove the homeless people from the park are missing the point.
“That wouldn’t solve the problem. It would simply push folks who are going through a hard time somewhere else,” Davis said.
Even so, he said, behavioral requirements at Seven Hills Park are necessary, he said.
“There are also community standards and expectations that everyone needs to live up to,” Davis said.
Davis said the federal and state governments “just don’t put enough resources into helping people who have various challenges.”
“We all know how we could change this, but our country writ large has effectively made a collective decision not to do that,” Davis said.
The city councilors have asked the mayor’s office for a response in writing. The agenda items will also be sent to a subcommittee of the city council that deals with public health and public safety.
The discussion during the city council meeting begins at 1:10:52 of the video of the meeting.
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