MBTA Transit Police are threatening to sweep a temporary housing encampment in Medford, shouldering the Wellington T station, by this Friday. The site is currently occupied by six homeless young adults, three of whom are trans.
Despite the warming weather, it’s been an especially difficult month for this unhoused group. The threat of arrest and displacement comes after the MBTA reportedly gave them permission to stay, and in the wake of a fire set next to the camp and its inhabitants.
Attack on the camp?
On May 10, camp resident Mason Skyfall said he saw a man ignite a large pile of trash near their tents. The flames broke out just before 11pm.
According to Skyfall, he had just finished cooking and was listening to music when he noticed someone in a clearing filled with trash just north of the camp.
“Wait, that’s not one of our camp members,” he remembers thinking. Skyfall said he yelled, “Hey, someone’s lighting the camp on fire!”
The male figure ran.
“You son of a bitch, come back here!” Skyfall alerted the others: “Get the fuck out of your tents!”
He said he then saw the culprit “pouring a gas canister everywhere” before dropping it, partially full, into the flames. The campers then rushed over to throw their limited supply of water on the smoking heap, trying to avoid a 911 call that could lead to police evacuating them.
Their attempts to keep things under wraps were in vain. The fire started “popping” and “crackling,” with the gas can the assailant dropped exploding. Skyfall said that it was hot enough to melt through “shopping carts in a minute-and-a-half.”
Firefighters to the rescue
The tent closest to the fire belonged to Jahzmine, a young mother who is pregnant with her second child. She said she struggles to find food, and noted that the attack happened on Mother’s Day, adding insult to the injury of being “nearly murdered.”
“If the fire department had been another 20 minutes, I’d have burned alive,” Jahzmine said. “I was up until 5 or 6am; my body would not let me fall asleep after.”
Her thoughts during the attack bounced between “grabbing the most expensive shit out of our tent,” like electronics, and wanting to call her partner to say that she loved him in case she perished.
Reached for comment, a Medford spokesperson said, “Engine 4 stretched one line and had the fire knocked down in under five minutes.”
Those living at the site noted that the fire was extinguished in a matter of minutes, but said that it took a few additional hours for authorities to canvass and assess the crime scene.
Investigating the alleged arson
One Wellington camper said they were lucky that it rained a couple days before the fire. If the site had been dry, it could have been a “totally different story.”
In 2022, an unhoused man camping in another Medford spot nearby was found dead inside his burned tent. According to the state’s Department of Fire Services, the cause of the fire at the “small homeless encampment” at 295 Middlesex Ave. was put under investigation by the Medford Fire Department, Medford Police Department, the State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit, and State Police assigned to the offices of the Middlesex District Attorney, though “the fire [did] not appear suspicious at [the] time.”
Asked about that fire from several years ago, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security Public Information Officer Jake Wark said that investigators found “cooking appliances and what appeared to be electrical power, possibly from a generator, as potential ignition sources. … They found no evidence that it had been intentionally set.”
Regarding the recent fire, a Medford spokesperson said that commonwealth authorities are leading the inquiry. The State Fire Marshal’s Office investigates potential arsons, including when local experts are unable to determine the cause of a fire or explosion.
“Luckily, [the police] took our side,” Mr. Skyfall said.
Campers get eviction notice
On May 14, just four days after the fire, several Transit Police officers visited the campsite. A cop who is familiar to the campers gave them a vague deadline, saying they would be clearing the lot soon.
The next day, MBTA cops showed up again. This time, they said the squatters had around two weeks to leave the site with their belongings—or be charged with criminal trespass. A few days later, the deadline to leave was confirmed for Friday, May 29. The transit agency did not respond to questions about the alleged changing directives.
Speaking for this story, several campers and at least one local housing advocate named this site specifically as one where police have accommodated homeless encampments for years. Now, they fear that could change.
The Cambridge connection
The transit cop who some of the campers know is typically stationed in Harvard Square. Members of this group know that area well, and only moved to Medford after the Y2Y Youth Shelter in Cambridge closed for the season.
According to Y2Y, the country’s first student-run youth homeless shelter, the basement facility on Church Street hosts half of all youth shelter beds in Greater Boston. However, it closes for four months of the year, with the latest gap displacing the approximately 24 youth staying there per night.
Some of the people staying by the Wellington T station intend on using the Y2Y shelter when it reopens on June 15. At least one of them, however, just turned 25, and is no longer eligible for its youth services.
All of them say they do not know where they will go if they are forced to leave the Medford patch.
“We don’t have another place to take our camp,” Jahzmine said. “We don’t.”
