New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, and Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu were elected on the same night last year, he a former police captain and state senator, and she a former city council member and protégé of a progressive Democratic senator, Elizabeth Warren. 

Both of these new mayors are trying to tackle homelessness, and their policy plans are as different as their personal upbringings and professional experiences; Mr. Adams’s plan is being criticized as “extreme” while Ms. Wu’s policy is being called a threat to public safety.

The two mayors have vastly different personal experiences and styles. Mr. Adams came of age in a rat-infested Brooklyn apartment before rising through the ranks of the NYPD and New York’s political establishment. Ms. Wu, a first-generation American, was born and raised in Chicago before earning two degrees from Harvard and winning a seat on the Boston City Council at age 29. 

As they try to make their mark on an issue that plagues both cities, some are wondering whether the plans they offer are a long-term solution or merely temporary bandages on an intractable problem. 

In 2014, Boston closed a homeless shelter on the harbor’s Long Island, which led to a hasty relocation of homeless individuals to the South End neighborhood. In the years since, homeless Bostonians have relocated to an area near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard that came to be called “Mass & Cass” and “Methadone Mile” by locals.

Mayor Wu campaigned aggressively on solving Boston’s homeless crisis. She proposed lowering the thresholds for entering shelters, establishing non-police crisis response units, and investing in mental health services for those on the streets. She also has worked closely with the state’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, on issues of housing development and mental health treatment. 

Yet tensions have risen between the two in recent months, forcing Ms. Wu to scale back her dreams of wide expansions in affordable housing. As that breakdown of cooperation unfolded, the city’s Health Commission took a more radical approach. 

In October, the Boston Herald reported that the mayor’s administration was distributing drug kits to homeless individuals at Mass & Cass that included clean pipes for smoking meth or crack and tourniquets for heroin use.

After the plan was disclosed, a Boston councilor member, Michael Flaherty, who serves as chairman of the public safety committee, derided the plan as dangerous: “My initial reaction was, ‘What in God’s name are they doing?” 

“Let me make this perfectly clear. No one — no one — down at Mass & Cass is getting straight, getting sober, getting the mental health [assistance] they need, or getting their life back on track,” he told Boston 25 News. “If anybody at the Boston Public Health Commission thinks this is a good idea, maybe they should start distributing kits in front of their own house.”

Mayor Adams has taken a dramatically different approach. On November 28, Mr. Adams issued a directive that allows police officers to detain homeless New Yorkers who exhibit signs of mental health distress. The directive states that officers may use discretion when encountering these individuals on streets or subways if they are “conducting themselves in a manner likely to result in serious harm to self or others.”

In a prerecorded video statement, Mr. Adams said that many homeless individuals are unwilling to recognize their situation and seek treatment. “The very nature of their illnesses keeps them from realizing they need intervention and support,” he said. 

Mr. Adams added that “it is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past.” The number of homeless arrests for either felony or misdemeanor crimes in New York is currently up 125 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021. 

A former Boston City Council president, Larry DiCara, told the Sun that there are concerning aspects about both of the mayors’ plans. 

Mr. DiCara said Ms. Wu’s plan to distribute drugs kits is a mistake. “I think facilitating and enabling people to take drugs which are against the law is bad public policy. To some extent you’re inviting other drug users.”

He added that the city’s homeless population isn’t necessarily from the city itself. “They’re from all over the place. The word gets out that this is where people are hanging out, doing drugs. [Public health officials] are facilitating and enabling this.”

The flaw in Mr. Adams’s plan, Mr. DiCara said, is the breadth of the mandate the NYPD has been given and its ability to determine who really needs help. “The real question is: Who is mentally ill?” he asked.

The idea of involuntarily detaining homeless people and having them seek mental health treatment has been floated in Boston. Before Mayor Wu was elected, the sheriff of Suffolk County — where Boston is located — proposed sending Mass & Cass habitants to a foreclosed detention center for treatment. 

“Why don’t we open up that facility? I have a full-blown mental health team. I have a full-blown substance abuse team,” Sheriff Steve Tompkins told GBH News last year. “Have a shower, a meal, a bed, and help them with their medical needs.”

Both Mr. Adams and Ms. Wu inherited their homelessness crises just a few months ago, hardly enough time to solve a chronic issue. Yet as years of insufficient investment in affordable housing and mental health treatment, as many have claimed, have caught up with both cities, the mayors have reached the conclusion that any new efforts to do so are better than no new efforts.