The Boston Common has brought together the state’s most powerful politicians with the city’s most down and out, the gentry from Beacon Hill and Back Bay with immigrants from the North End and Southie, and skateboarding teens from the suburbs with inner-city kids moving to music. However, recently the country's oldest park has become notorious for crime, drug use, and its homeless population.

At 6 a.m., the area around the Brewer Fountain was still filled with sleeping homeless men and women wrapped in blankets and foam pads.