“When we don’t have positive activities in the area, it just exacerbates the problem,” she said.

The mayor also is encouraging well-intended groups who provide food and goods to the homeless at the top of State Street to work with The Beacon homeless day resource center and other nonprofits and do distributions at other locations.

Much more to do

The city, Rhodes-Conway stressed, will continue to focus on helping the homeless through the creation of housing, outreach and other means. But it will also take new measures to improve quality of life on the upper State Street area, including adding more portable toilets in discreet locations and extending the mall concourse services to include Central Library so city employees can do cleaning and tag belongings left there with warnings that they must be removed or they will be taken away and stored for pick up at another location.

The mayor is also supporting the efforts of the volunteer homeless outreach group Friends of State Street Family to locate small clusters of lockers for temporary storage in the area.

Together, “the steps will make a difference,” Illstrup said, adding that the mayor’s office has been “great partners and have really tried to work with us.”