BOSTON — The nation's founders considered a postal service essential to American government. So essential, in fact, that they listed it among Congress's core powers in Article I of the Constitution.
Now, more than two centuries later and facing a "severe liquidity crisis," according to Postmaster General David Steiner, the United States Postal Service is shuttering branches in Massachusetts.
On Monday, members of the state's congressional delegation and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu sent sharply worded letters to Steiner, criticizing USPS over recently announced plans to study the permanent closure of Allston's only post office, which initially shut down in 2019 for structural issues.
The Postal Service has also closed a location in Watertown and will shut the Fields Corner branch in Dorchester later this month as the lease expires. Both are temporary shutdowns, at least in name.
Wu called the move "an abdication of responsibility by USPS to serve the people of Boston," writing that the plan for the Allston location was an "alarming decision" and an "about-face."
The criticism follows a years-long back-and-forth as the Postal Service promised and then retreated from plans to reopen the post office in Allston.
In 2023, four years after the initial closure, real estate brokers working on behalf of the Postal Service negotiated a letter of intent with developer Eden Properties to put a new post office on the ground floor of its development in the neighborhood. In 2025, USPS officials told the city the agency would reopen the branch. This spring, the Postal Service dropped its effort to secure a lease on the Harvard Avenue property, where 170 units of housing are also being built.
Finally, last month, USPS announced a proposal to permanently close the post office.
The change in plans comes at a time of significant financial strain for the Postal Service. The agency reported a $2.5 billion net loss in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026. While the figure is an improvement from the year before, Steiner said in August that the Postal Service was still facing systemic challenges.
Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who appeared alongside Wu at a rally with residents at the Allston post office site Monday, framed the recent moves by USPS as part of a larger Trump administration scheme to strip down and ultimately privatize mail service.
"These efforts to degrade and undermine the Postal Service are intended to exhaust you and your neighbors so that you'll give up and do your business somewhere else," Pressley said. "Hell no, we won't go."
Steiner has come out against the idea of privatizing the USPS.
In a video to employees after taking the job in July 2025, he said he believed "in the current structure of the Postal Service as a self-financing, independent entity of the executive branch."
USPS also sent a statement to Spectrum News responding to the concerns raised over the Allston closure.
"The Postal Service has complied with, and is currently complying with, applicable official regulations with regard to locations being studied for potential permanent closure," spokesperson Judy Ferriera wrote. "The Postal Service will review all input before making any final decision."
Public comment on the closure is open until Oct. 11.
Ferriera added that Allston customers can access the post office in the adjoining neighborhood of Brighton.
Wu and other advocates pointed to language in federal law that describes the Postal Service as "a basic and fundamental service."
"They put you to sleep, then three years later it's gone," Scott Hoffman of the American Postal Workers Union said of branch closures. "We're not going to sleep in the city of Boston."