'Living Quarters' Found In Multiple Boston Storage Space Units
BOSTON (CBS) -- Several people were caught living out of storage units in Boston Tuesday. An inspection of the CubeSmart Storage facility on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston prompted the discovery.
The city's Inspectional Services department discovered everything from bedding, curtains, food and extension cords inside of these storage units.
Due to the health violations, the city ordered that all storage units being used as living quarters be vacated.
Jose Rivera and his wife were two of the people made to move out Wednesday from the storage unit. He says they'd sleep there during the day and take off at night. "You're supposed to leave after 10 o'clock," Rivera said. "So we do. We leave before 10 o'clock."
Some say people have been living there for years. "It's almost as if this was a hotel or something at one point," Jamal Herring said. Herring has rented storage for three years now.
"People have been doing it for a while that I know of. For years. At least four or five years that I know or for a fact," Brian Freda explained.
"And you go in there in the bathroom and it's a long line out there like people getting up waiting to go to work or something," Herring added.
Jamal Herring pays $500 a month to keep some of his things here. "I'm spending this amount of money and you got folks that come here every day and stay here," he said.
He says if he came her after 6 p.m. there would be a full blown food court downstairs. "Every day the same thing the same thing over and over again," Herring said.
Now he wants answers.
"I've been complaining about this for two years," he explained.
A neighboring business says all of the people living inside were taken to city shelters.
"People do whatever they can to get around here to get by," Freda said.
Members of Inspectional Services, the Boston Health Commission, the Boston Fire Department, the Boston Police Department, and the Public Health Commission all assisted in the inspection.
WBZ-TV's Lisa Gresci contributed to this report.
