For the last three decades, Boston's Long Island has been the home of a vibrant community: the city's shelter, housing hundreds of homeless people, addicts and troubled teens. During the recent years, Boston's taxpayers and nonprofit groups have spent millions of dollars to refurbish the island's old buildings where until last October up to 700 people sought shelter and other services every day. The community thrived and its two farms were producing some 25,000 pounds of produce a year. Potatoes, parsnips, cilantro, as well as eggs and honey.
The shelter however fell victim of America's infrastructure crisis. A bridge between the island and the city of Boston was deemed unsafe. To replace the bridge, the city would have to pay an estimated $90 million. An evacuation of the island was ordered instead. With about one-third of Boston's shelter beds for the homeless and about half the city’s detox beds based on the island, the city's social services are now in limbo.
The deserted shelter facilities now complete the scenery of abandonment on Boston's Long Island. With, long-abandoned bunkers that hid gun batteries and Nike missiles, a dusty chapel that hasn’t held services in years, a shuttered morgue, a 150-year-old cemetery, Long Island now looks more like a ghost island.
SEE ALSO: More abandoned islands around the world // More abandoned places in Massachusetts // More abandoned places in the United States // LIST OF ALL DESERTED PLACES
For more deserted places, LIKE US on Facebook and FOLLOW US on twitter
(Click here for the full post)
