Is this week’s removal of an encampment of unhoused people from Kensington Avenue the start of a transformation of the neighborhood?
Or will it be just one more of the many fleeting cleanups, soon undone and forgotten, that Kensington’s central corridor has seen over the years?
Residents, business owners, and people who frequent the area’s open-air drug market are deeply split on that question.
Janet O’Neal, the director of Brightside Academy, a daycare half a block from the corner of Kensington and Allegheny avenues, applauded the clearing of the street early Wednesday morning and said the city seems to be dedicated to a serious, long-term revitalization effort.
“Since Mayor Parker took over, the outside of our businesses have been more clean,” she said. “People come out like twice a day, keep our area clean, wash down our pavements and stuff and kind of move the people along.”
She did note that the drug users and unhoused people quickly return, and she wondered what the city’s doing to prevent that from happening this time.
“Once they do all the moving, when they come back, then what? Is [the city] going to keep doing it? Is this going to be a permanent solution?” she asked.
Some predicted the effort will fail unless it’s accompanied by a major infusion of resources to reduce poverty. Others said the city’s stated intention “to eliminate Kensington as the narcotics destination of Philadelphia” is utterly futile, no matter what they do, as demonstrated by past failures.
“Everyone’s just gonna migrate somewhere else,” said Brandon, a resident of the neighborhood who was walking on a side street near Kensington Avenue. “They did Operation Sunrise like… [26] years ago, and everyone just migrated somewhere else. I don’t think it’s going to change anything.”
In fact, on Wednesday many people could be seen continuing to openly smoke and inject drugs steps away from the heavily policed section, including on adjoining blocks of Kensington Avenue, near the entrance to the El on Allegheny Avenue, and on nearby streets.
“I don’t think there’s any hope out here at all,” Brandon said. “I’ve been getting high for the past 16 years now. Nothing has ever changed, except for the drugs.”
“I want to see this place thrive again”
Some 675 people have been living on Kensington’s streets in recent months, according to city officials, including about 75 in tents on the two blocks of Kensington Ave south of the Allegheny El station.
A month ago city workers posted signs warning that tents would be cleared this week, and they subsequently managed to persuade 36 people to accept offers of treatment and shelter and leave the street, Chief Public Safety Director Adam Geer said Wednesday. Others left on their own in recent days.
On Wednesday, dozens of police officers started arriving shortly before 6 a.m. and blocked off Kensington Avenue under the Allegheny El station with yellow tape and crowd barricades, according to a video stream of the site.
Many of those remaining in the encampment left on their own and a final 12 accepted offers of help, Geer said. Meanwhile, sanitation workers power-washed the pavement and used leaf blowers to push trash into the street for street sweepers to collect.
“I love it,” said one resident, Alex, who declined to give last name. “I wish they just cleaned everything up, period, 100%.”
Alex said he owns a barbershop near McPherson Square Park, often called Needle Park for the intravenous drug users who congregate there. He said users shoot up in front of his shop and his wife once needed medical treatment after she was accidentally poked by a discarded needle.
“Hopefully this is not a halfway situation, it’s a long-term situation,” he said of the police action. “It just can’t stop here. They need to keep moving forward with it.”
There have been cleanups before, often around election time, he said, but they eventually stop and the open drug trade and use resume. He said users should be “locked up” or taken to facilities elsewhere, for the sake of residents’ mental health and families like his that are raising children in the neighborhood.
“I want to see this place thrive again, like it used to,” he said. “I remember when I was younger, and this wasn’t around here. This was the best spot to go shopping. I used to love it as a kid.”
“Now you can’t even pass by. I avoid this area if I can. I don’t even want to be around here. But you know, when you don’t have nothing else, this is what you got. This is what you got to work with,” he said.
A dire need for health care
A few aspects of the city’s plans remain unclear.
Officials have been saying that the encampment clearance is separate from a larger plan to crack down on drug dealing and “revive” Kensington, which has yet to begin.
Yet in remarks to the press as the cleanup wrapped up on Wednesday, Geer described it as the first step in an ongoing effort to move drug users out of the neighborhood and into treatment.
“Our outreach teams… have gone beyond the encampment area to continue to engage as many other folks as they can, as they do every day,” he said. They’ll continue to do that “tomorrow, the day after that, the day after that, the day after that, as we continue to restore norms here in Kensington, and make this one of our most thriving neighborhoods in Philadelphia.”
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and others have repeatedly stressed that drug users will be offered treatment and shelter by outreach teams before being threatened with arrest. But on Wednesday, police officers arrived early and removed people living in tents before outreach teams arrived, the Inquirer reported.
Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration has proposed borrowing $100 million to create triage and wellness facilities to house and treat the hundreds of people who could be targeted for removal, as well as increasing spending on policing and sanitation citywide.
But city officials admit there aren’t enough spots available in treatment programs for a potential flood of new patients with addiction and multiple other needs. In addition, critics say that relocating a few hundred unhoused people and arresting some drug dealers won’t do anything to address the economic want and psychosocial problems that have made Kensington an inviting place for the drug trade to flourish.
Gordon Coonfield, a Villanova University professor who lives a few blocks from Kensington Avenue, watched as police directed traffic away from the roped-off section Wednesday morning and predicted the street clearing would make “a fabulous headline.”
“It looks like the mayor is getting tough on a dirty situation that she inherited from years of neglect,” he said. “But this is a short-term solution. I’ve been here through three encampment removals, and it’s always the same: they get pushed out, they get pushed further in every direction, and then they have to come back because here’s where the drugs are.”
Coonfield runs the “Kensington Remembers” project, photographing and recording street memorials in the neighborhood. He said a long-term solution to Kensington’s woes would involve investing more in drug treatment, healthcare, and a host of other needs.
“Until we do things like daycare for everyone, quality education for everyone, health services — I mean, a lot of the really highly visual elements of this disaster that you see down here just wouldn’t be the case if we had basic health care for everyone,” he said. “If we had basic treatment services, if we had plenty of therapists, plenty of beds, this could be a different city.”
“This neighborhood has been hurting for many generations,” Coonfield said. “This has been let happen through our neglect, and we need to do something about it.”
