An association dedicated to preserving a Roxbury landmark says it is grappling with homeless lingerers spilling over from Mass and Cass, a problem it describes as “tenacious.”

Over the past five years, the Shirley-Eustis House Association has worked with a private security company daily to remove loiterers from its property, which features a historic house museum, community open space and landscaped gardens — “a serene retreat from the commercial bustle of Dudley Street and Massachusetts Avenue,” as the nonprofit describes it.

With a limited budget, the association has been challenged in addressing problems stemming from homeless drug and alcohol addiction on its grounds, while maintaining the Shirley-Eustis House, built in the 1740s as a summer estate for Massachusetts Colony Gov. William Shirley. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Suzy Buchanan, executive director of the Shirley-Eustis House Association, says her organization is partnering with one of its neighbors, Children Services of Roxbury, to “increase the number of daily patrols.”

“But the problem remains tenacious,” Buchanan told the Herald on Saturday, “a microcosm of a larger economic problem that we know from our own history will never be solved by a single mayor or a task force.”

Homeless people are seen regularly behind the Shirley-Eustis House and near the Carriage House, a home built in 1806 by Nathaniel Ingersoll, a ship captain and merchant, that is used today for various programs and private functions.

One sign warns the public to not trespass onto the premises that are protected by New England Security, stating the property has 24-hour security patrols and video surveillance. Another sign reads, “Shirley Place is closed from dusk to dawn. NO LOITERING. POLICE TAKE NOTICE.”

But that is not stopping a years-old problem from escalating, a Roxbury resident whose property abuts the Shirley-Eustis House told the Herald on Friday.

The resident, who asked for anonymity, said she’s seeing “too many people” hiding away from the street by hanging out on the mansion’s steps, engaging in drug activity and sleeping.

She said she is often forced to pick up trash that the loiterers spew into her backyard, noting how the frequenters have stolen packages delivered to her home in the past, and in one instance, someone U-locked their bike to a fence on her property.

In January 2024, the resident moved back to the Roxbury home that she lived in from the age of 5 to 30.

“Who wants to walk out your back door, and this is the first thing that you have to look at?” she said. “My daughter goes out there, she brings the cats outside, and sometimes men or women make comments to her. It doesn’t make her feel comfortable.”

The Shirley-Eustis House is just the latest example of how destinations and community hubs in Boston are falling victim to the spillover from Mass and Cass, an open-air drug market at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

City Councilor Ed Flynn is set to introduce a resolution at this Wednesday’s council meeting that calls for Mass and Cass and neighborhoods impacted by the spillover to be declared as a public safety and public health emergency as well as a humanitarian crisis.

In his resolution, Flynn highlights how “open-air drug dealing, drug use, human trafficking, shoplifting and violent crimes” commonly seen at Mass and Cass have now encroached into the
“South End, Nubian Square, Roxbury, Dorchester, South Boston, Downtown Boston and the Back Bay.”

“Any reasonable person who visits this area will say unequivocally that what has taken place there on a daily basis for over a decade now … is completely unacceptable,” Flynn states in the resolution.

“As of July 2025, as well-intentioned as some of the City of Boston’s efforts have been,” he adds, “it is wholly appropriate to finally acknowledge that the … current plan at Mass & Cass has been an abject failure by any standard.”

In September 2023, before the Wu administration ordered encampments to be taken down on Atkinson Street that November, Flynn joined three of his colleagues in seeking a state of emergency declaration at Mass and Cass.

The city’s Board of Health, however, “determined that the confluence of issues concentrated at Mass and Cass (did) not meet the legal standard for a declaration of public health state of emergency.”

Boston Public Health Commissioner Bisola Ojikutu at a South End community meeting in June admitted that the city’s plan to tackle the open-air drug market at Mass and Cass has failed.

Elected officials from the area are calling for the Wu administration to “reevaluate” the city’s plan that began with the removal of tent encampments, while South End residents have urged Mayor Michelle Wu to request that the National Guard be brought in.

Wu dismissed those calls last week while acknowledging it’s “not acceptable” for residents to have to side-step needles and fear for their safety at and around Mass and Cass.

“I don’t believe we need or should have a military deployment in our city,” Wu told reporters last Monday. “I do know that as we are looking to keep tackling the specific challenges with the opioid crisis at the national level and how that’s felt in local communities every single day.”

Flynn says it is “long past time to put wish lists aside and make a recovery campus a top priority for the City of Boston.”

The Roxbury resident whose property abuts the Shirley-Eustis House said that believes it would be “nice” for the National Guard to patrol the areas most impacted.

“This would possibly deter people,” she said, “but I don’t know where these people are going to go. They need to find a place to put them.”