City looks for more space for programs evacuated from Long Island - and to preserve the island for future use

Crews are working seven days a week to prepare two dormant public-health buildings in Mattapan for long-term use by halfway programs, while the city looks to rent or buy additional space - including possibly in the closed Radius hospital in Roxbury - for the several years before the bridge to Long Island can be repaired.

Although the city was able to find cots for all the homeless people on the island when police ordered it evacuated on Oct. 8, the city now has no spare beds to deal with extra homeless people seeking shelter on cold winter nights, John Townsend, the Boston Public Health Commission's director of administration and finance, said at a commission board meeting today.

And the city has so far been unable to replace some 60 beds in detox programs, meaning people are now being turned away.

Townsend said Camp HarborView, a city-run kids' camp, will use open this summer, using ferries.

Townsend said that even as that work is going on, crews continue to ferry to the island to retrieve items from the buildings evacuated in just four hours on Oct. 8 - and to prepare the buildings to withstand the onslaught of both winter and criminals with their eyes on all the piping and fixtures in the buildings.

Theft "is a very serious concern for us," he said. The city has already had problems with people running their boats onto an island beach "and tearing copper piping out." In addition to locking down the buildings - and setting thermostats to 45 - he said the commission will have security staff patrolling the grounds.

He added that the commission plans to send barges carrying shipping containers to the island soon so that workers at city and non-profit programs that had used the island can load up all the desks, beds and other equipment they'd left behind and then get them delivered to their current spaces.

He said the commission is hoping to open a 74-bed facility in Mattapan on Nov. 3 to house two programs for people trying to re-enter society after substance abuse, one for men nearing the end of prison sentences, the other for people who need a short-term residential program. Both had been housed on Long Island. A second, 25-bed building in an old adult-daycare facility now used for furniture storage should be open in early December, he said.

Townsend said that as hard as the sudden evacuation was, the commission knew the bridge would be closed eventually and had already prepared - by stocking the South End Fitness Center with supplies to quickly turn parts of it into an emergency shelter and by signing contracts with private shelter providers and even boat operators to provide once daily ferry service to Long Island.

Although the city is continuing plans to build a large concrete dock at Long Island, Townsend said he's not sure the city would be willing to use ferries rather than rebuilding the bridge, because ferries are very expensive.

The commission board went into a closed session to discuss possible deals with landlords for additional space for the programs displaced by the bridge closing.