Mayor Cherelle Parker celebrated the opening of a $54 million substance abuse recovery center in renovated city-owned buildings on Wednesday.
Opening the Riverview Wellness Village in Northeast Philly is a key step toward fulfilling the vow she made when she took office last year to shut down Kensington’s open-air drug market. It’s part of an effort to move unhoused drug users off the street and into treatment, and to comprehensively address the health impacts of the city’s decades-old opioid epidemic.
“This is long-term care, treatment and housing. This is a part of our public health and safety ecosystem,” Parker told some 200 city workers, elected officials, judges, construction workers, law enforcement officials and health care professionals who gathered at the complex’s main building for the announcement. “This is about prevention, intervention and even enforcement, but this is also about putting people on a path to self-sufficiency.”
The 336-bed facility will provide housing, healthcare, job counseling and other services to people who have completed an initial drug treatment program and have moved to the next stage of their recovery. They may live there for up to one year.
Wellness court draws criticism
In cooperation with the local and state judiciary, the city will also launch a special wellness court the week of January 21, chief public safety director Adam Geer said. The court will aim to do same-day processing of people arrested in Kensington on minor offenses, and offer them immediate access to drug treatment as an alternative to jail or other punishment.
Those standing with Parker during the announcement included Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty, as well as representatives from Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s offices.
The city envisions a system where the wellness court, the existing Police Assisted Diversion program, and outreach efforts bring people who are living on the street into “wellness fusion centers” for assessment, according to a flowchart displayed at the event Wednesday.
Some then move into shelters, such as the city-run Philly Home at Girard that opened last year, while others will be referred to various drug treatment programs. After leaving treatment, they can go to the Riverview Wellness Village or other recovery homes, and eventually move into permanent housing, per the chart.
The planned neighborhood wellness court, or NWC, has been criticized for using the threat of incarceration to coerce people into treatment. In a December letter to Parker and Geer, the ACLU, New Kensington CDC, Homeless Advocacy Project and other groups said they had “grave concerns” that the court “will perpetuate harmful treatment of people in the Kensington neighborhood and place their constitutional rights at risk.”
The program appears to treat people in Kensington differently than those in other neighborhoods, who are generally not detained for summary offenses, the letter said. It will likely disproportionately affect people of color rather than white people, they argue, and the same-day adjudications will deprive those arrested of opportunities to obtain evidence for their defense.
People will receive citations based on prosecutorial discretion, rather than a full review by the District Attorney’s office, and will be expected to make legal decisions while intoxicated or experiencing dangerous withdrawal symptoms, the ACLU wrote.
The authors “urge the city to reconsider instituting the NWC program, and instead provide more transparency about the efficacy of existing city services and diversionary programs that could meaningfully address the root causes of the issues many in Kensington face: housing instability, mental health concerns, and substance abuse disorder,” the advocates said.
A home, not a shelter
Riverview Wellness Village represents a change from the Parker administration’s initial proposals last year to create triage centers where unhoused drug users could receive speedy treatment and referral to services.
After meeting with health care and drug treatment providers, city officials learned there are plenty of drug treatment beds in Philadelphia — about 1,700, according to managing director Adam Thiel, plus additional behavioral health beds — but only 500 recovery beds.
A recent survey found that 99% of those recovery beds were filled, creating a risk that people leaving drug treatment will become homeless, said Isabel McDevitt, the city’s executive director of community wellness and recovery.
She said putting city resources into long-term recovery is an essential part of closing Kensington’s homeless encampments and improving life in the neighborhood.
“This is not ‘shelter,’ ” McDevitt said during a tour of the buildings where residents will live. “This is housing for up to a year where people can really get the care that they need to reduce their barriers, so that they’re less likely to relapse and end up on the streets again.”
“Give us a billion dollars”
The facility is on a 19-acre property off State Road in Holmesburg, along the Delaware River, next to the complex where the city’s prisons are located.
Parker acknowledged critics who have argued the siting seems to criminalize substance abuse and behavioral disorders, while arguing it makes “efficient use of scarce resources” to put the facility on city land rather than paying to use another site.
“I hear you, but if you would just give us the opportunity to start building what doesn’t exist and focus on a comprehensive, long-term strategy … we’ll be a model for the nation about how you deal with this issue,” she said.
City Council authorized $100 million in borrowing for the project, of which close to $54 million was spent to renovate the property, the administration said. Parker wants to put up new buildings to house an additional 300 residents and add other amenities at an estimated cost of $125 million.
The administration hasn’t yet identified funding for the expansion.
“If you want to help Philadelphia, give us a billion dollars” to build housing and continuum of care health facilities generally, Parker said. She was responding to a question about whether she would communicate with the incoming Trump administration. “I’m not going to let politics get in the way of me asking the right people who I know can deliver the help that I need,” she said.
Planning and running Riverview will cost $23 million in the current fiscal year that runs through June, and $47 million in fiscal 2026, officials said. The city is covering the initial costs and hopes to eventually receive some reimbursement from state and federal sources, such as Medicaid and the Pa. Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.
A “homey” place to prepare for the future
The city has owned the Riverview property since 1943 and first constructed a building there in 1956. The facility originally served as an extension of an older “indigent housing complex,” the administration said, and has also served as a personal care home.
It consists of the main Meeting House where Parker spoke and six low-slung, tan brick residential cottages with arboreal names like Acorn and Dogwood. It was dilapidated and required extensive renovation over the past six months, she said.
During the tour, McDevitt showed off a living room or lounge with pillow-strewn couches facing a mosaic picture wall, along with refrigerators and a microwave. Residents will be offered three meals a day, but can also prepare their own food. The living pods have two or four beds each and lockers for each roommate.
“It’s clearly about trying to make it very homey,” she said. “It’s extremely important for people who are making this transition to have access to quality residences as they are taking the steps to change their lives.”
To help operate the facility, the administration has contracted with Merakey, a large social services provider that already runs mobile crisis units in Kensington, homeless outreach for SEPTA, and other programs for the city.
A health clinic will be run by Dr. Ala Stanford, founder of the Black Doctors Consortium and a former Biden administration official who gained fame for her activism during the pandemic.
In addition to behavioral and medical healthcare, residents will be offered life skills and workforce development, culinary training, art therapy, community gardening, and job-hunting help.
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