No More Alcoholics

The Cambridge and Somerville Program for Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Rehabilitation (CASPAR) presently operates a 55-bed Emergency Services Center for alcoholic, drug abusing and homeless men and women.

It handles 25,000 visits per year. It is presently located at 240 Albany St. This is located too near to MIT, and the growing business community in that area of Cambridge, and it should no longer be located there.

It has therefore been suggested by some parties that this CASPAR Emergency Service Center be relocated to Green Street next to the Central Square Police Station.

Moving it to this location is a mistake. It will threaten the peace and tranquility and growing sense of community on Green Street and Franklin Street extending from Central Square to Putnam Avenue.

I have watched this community grow and come together slowly over the past 20 years. This CASPAR center would destroy the already frayed fabric of this brave community.

An indication of this frayed fabric is that the small parks at 500 Franklin St. and on Green Street behind 1000 Mass Ave. are haunted by alcoholics and drug abusers. Some of these men occasionally make threatening gestures toward passers-by.

Other communities adjacent to Central Square are similarly affected, indicating that the City of Cambridge is unable to keep wandering alcoholics and drug abusers around Central Square under sufficient control. This is a sign that increases in the number of such men there is not advisable at this time.

Central Square houses three of the five homeless shelters in Cambridge: the Salvation Army, a 35-bed facility at 402 Mass Ave.; the Women's Emergency Shelter, a 22-bed facility at 19 Brookline St.; and Shelter, Inc., a 21-bed facility at 109 School St. In addition, the CASPAR Shelter at 240 Albany is only one-half mile from Central Square. These shelters are already putting a great strain on the area.

Central Square could become one of the great cultural areas of metropolitan Boston, with its beautiful and talented interracial, multicultural, rainbow community.

With this vision in mind, I am calling out to Harvard students and other people of Cambridge to save the neighborhoods around Central Square so that they can live out the potential that is slowly emerging there.

Flooding Central Square with alcoholics and drug abusers at this time will destroy the presently existing delicate fabric that is bringing us all together.

There must be a balance between altruism and inner strength: loving altruism that prompts us to open our neighborhoods to these unfortunate people and the still fragile strength of communities around Central Square.

It is at critical moments like this that the great art of city management is called for. Arlen Wolpert