Kensington Avenue faces uncertainty and hope ahead of City Hall’s crackdown

News that City Hall plans to end one of the nation’s most infamous open-air drug markets has been slow to spread on Kensington Avenue. Looking out at the neighborhood’s entrenched suffering — the drug corners, the homelessness, the open wounds, the swirling trash, the deep poverty — Matt Gilger had his doubts.

Gilger, 42, recalled the drug use and homeless encampments that overran McPherson Square last year. For months now, a police cruiser has sat in the park, pushing the crowds and encampments to adjacent blocks. Walking around the unusually empty green space last week, Gilger questioned the idea of moving the addiction from one corner to the next.

“I don’t know where they’re going to push it, because they sure as hell didn’t cure it,” he said.

Nearly two months into her administration, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has yet to release specifics on her plan to dismantle a billion-dollar drug market and stabilize the neighborhood, leaving deep uncertainty over what’s next.

Local leaders said the neighborhood’s complex struggles require a comprehensive plan to avoid simply displacing the people on the street — as well as low-income residents who now contend with looming gentrification. Two harm reduction organizations are under fire to relocate from an area that saw the city’s highest number of overdose deaths in 2022, sparking concerns about surging fatalities and spreading disease. Some question whether Parker can deliver where so many past mayors have tried and failed.

But for some residents, the attention from City Hall has provided a newfound resolve. On Wednesday, inside the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) headquarters on Somerset Street, there was an air of hope.

Neighborhood nonprofits announced the release of an additional $3.5 million from the opioid settlement funds for home repairs as well as foreclosure and eviction assistance to neighborhood’s predominantly Black and Latino longtime residents.

“It’s gonna be a great neighborhood,” said Kensington resident Guillermo Garcia, who has helped nonprofits identify neighbors who need help fixing their homes.

The funds are a pittance when it comes to fixing Kensington. But the news conference nonetheless highlighted the intensifying interest in the neighborhood’s future, drawing philanthropic foundations, elected officials, neighbors, and even international media organizations.

“There are a lot of people who do care about Kensington,” NKCDC director Bill McKinney said. “I’m overwhelmed every morning when I wake up in my home in this community and I walk my two blocks to work. And sometimes I look and say, ‘Is there a path forward?’ And I believe there is a path forward.”

For now, that path remains obscured. Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel expects to deliver his law enforcement plan to Parker by April, saying only that the strategy would begin with a “communication” phase and then increased enforcement of low-level crimes like open drug use.

As for the long-term vision, Parker said in an interview Thursday that community members would be involved in the discussions. The mayor said the ongoing resident-driven planning process — led by NKCDC and Impact Services — was a potential guiding light for her plan.

She said she made clear while she campaigned that her approach to Kensington would be “holistic” and blend law enforcement with new opportunities for drug treatment, housing, and economic growth.

“I spent a great deal of time in Kensington talking with stakeholders, communicating with them, talking about my strategy,” Parker said. “I’m not working on doing anything now that wasn’t included in what I told people I would do if they would give me the honor and privilege of representing them as mayor.”

The City Council members most focused on Kensington have said that change in the neighborhood won’t come without controversy. A group that calls itself “the Kensington caucus” — Jimmy Harrity, Quetcy Lozada, Mark Squilla, and Mike Driscoll — has already sought to push at least two harm reduction organizations out of the neighborhood and floated the idea of establishing a “triage center” where people in addiction could be brought to either seek rehabilitation or face arrest.

Harrity, who represents the city at-large and lives in Kensington, said that City Hall’s rhetoric has had a positive impact and that drug dealers have thinned around his block “because they know there’s a new sheriff in town.”

How deeply the messaging has resonated on the street remains to be seen. Along Kensington Avenue last week, many people living in the throes of addiction and homelessness said they hadn’t been watching or reading the news and seemed unaware of an impending crackdown.

Others said there had been an uptick in aggressive policing and that officers had been making more arrests for narcotics possession and paraphernalia — offenses that have long been overlooked in the area.

“They back on stop and frisk now,” said Q, a man living on the streets who requested anonymity due to privacy concerns.

» READ MORE: A look at the use of stop-in-frisk in Philadelphia and what’s allowed under the law

Deputy Police Commissioner Pedro Rosario, whom Parker appointed to lead the effort to improve conditions in the neighborhood, declined to comment on specifics of the enforcement strategy. Police made 750 arrests for drug offenses citywide through Feb. 22 — a small volume, but a 30% increase over last year, according to data from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

Harrity said his neighbors support police more aggressively enforcing drug laws and said critics are disconnected from what residents want.

“What people in other parts of the city want for that neighborhood doesn’t mean anything to the people who are living it,” he said. “I know that policing is always a concern, but the bottom line is in a neighborhood like mine where it’s been lacking for so long, they’re happy to see it.”

Meanwhile in City Hall, there’s some trepidation over both Council’s tactics and the mayor’s plan.

Three City Council aides representing different members, all speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to freely discuss the political dynamics, said some members are frustrated they haven’t seen a clear plan to expand treatment options from the new Kensington caucus.

And several members said they’re concerned about pushing out groups like Prevention Point, the city’s oldest needle exchange. The organization is the also most well-known advocate in Kensington for harm reduction, an approach to addiction that seeks to keep drug users alive whether or not they’re ready to quit.

The Democratic members of the Kensington caucus said they heard positive feedback from constituents following the news last week that one harm reduction organization’s lease would not be renewed.

Other Council members have privately expressed frustration that the Parker administration hasn’t specified when a law enforcement offensive could begin, where people living on the streets in Kensington should go, or whether there are enough available spaces in rehabilitation facilities to handle an influx of patients.

But Parker has been clear that she’s awaiting a comprehensive strategy from top officials including Bethel and Managing Director Adam K. Thiel, which is expected to be delivered around her 100th day in office — a date that would fall in early April.

“Everyone has a right to an opinion, and I’m sure there are a plethora of questions about the ‘how,’” Parker said. “My team is working extremely hard, and we’re working on developing solutions … we’re going to proffer solutions, and when we do, we’re going to share them with all of our stakeholders.”

For people on the street, those solutions feel like a matter of life and death.

D pushed a shopping cart along the Kensington Avenue corridor last week, a Bible perched atop a mountain of scrap metal they’d collected for money. It’s hard enough to find somewhere to sleep through the night, said D, who also asked not to be named due to privacy concerns. And waking up to police officers telling the homeless to clear out, it often feels like the city “is just trying to kill us off.”

Without access to housing or effective treatment, where are people supposed to go?

“They’re only making it worse,” D said.

Inquirer data editor Stephen Stirling contributed to this article.