It was announced yesterday that 2,500 evacuees from the Houston Astrodome and the San Antonio Alamodrome will be relocated to Otis Air Force Base.
Some of these people may chose to stay in Massachusetts when the 30-60 day “Operation Helping Hand” ends. (Note: later reports are that the “guests” will be staying until March.)
This will create both volunteer opportunities and jobs, and it will bring life and energy to the bedraggled Camp Edwards, which has been a ghost town since Nixon shut down most of the Air Force base as political retribution in the 70’s.
One assumes that the majority of the individuals and families are Black, and their being here resonates with the past: the Cape and the Islands have a long, honorable history of offering shelter to African Americans since the Underground Railroad days.
So far, the community has responded generously. For example, the local Red Cross added four phone lines to accommodate all the calls from potential donors and volunteers.
Still, I’m not naive enough to think that adding 2,500 desperate people, some of whom might require immediate hospitalization, to our already floundering economy is going to be a piece of cake.
For example, a friend of mine has been in line for heart surgery for over a month, because there’s only one specialist on Cape Cod who can perform the operation.
There’s also the question of who’s going to pay for this, and my bet is that it will be Massachusetts, not FEMA. The $600 mm surplus, which Republicans have argued should subsidize the long-promised rollback in the state income tax rate, has already been mentioned.
The police force in my town has a reputation for racial profiling, and I’m concerned that there could be “incidents” involving the visitors, particularly since we are one of the towns that abut the Base.
We don’t know how many potential wage-earners there will be among the 2,500, and perhaps, for those who choose to stay, there might be enough jobs to accommodate them, but the Cape is not exactly an economic hotbed. One thing is for sure: there will be fewer jobs in September and October than there were in July and August.
Homelessness is a major problem here, and affordable housing is limited. If people do decide to stay, where will they go at the end of “Operation Helping Hand”? The director of the local agency which administers the greatest number of Section 8 rental subsidies on Cape Cod said he hasn’t been contacted by anyone at either the Federal or State level about the new influx.
Finally, there’s the impact on the schools. We don’t know how many school-aged children will be included, but it’s been announced that they will be deployed both to the school on the base AND to “surrounding communities”. What does that mean, exactly?
This is not to criticize Massachusetts for extending a helping hand to people in desperate need, but a cautionary note: a lot more planning is needed to turn this into a real benefit both to the folks from “Down South” and the locals, as opposed to an impulsive pre-Presidential campaign decision by a Governor who lives in an affluent suburb 70 miles away.