The City of Philadelphia will receive $200 million from the national opioid settlement funds to help fight the opioid crisis, according to a press release from the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office. Per the terms of the settlement, large pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors must give the money to states and municipalities most affected by the opioid epidemic.
Philadelphia recorded 1,276 unintentional overdoses in 2021, largely focused in Kensington. Once a thriving industrial neighborhood, Kensington has seen a heavier concentration of addiction, poverty, and crime than other parts of the city.
“You’re talking about not just the impact of seeing people selling drugs on the street,” Lowell Brown, communications manager for the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), said. “But then you’re talking about this kind of pile on effect where Kensington is the place where ‘nobody lives,’ and ‘nobody worth anything lives’.”
Even within this neighborhood, there are varied perspectives on how to tackle the opioid crisis.
Esther Sawyer, a member of the Neighborhood Crusades, and urban ministry organization focused on anti-violence and anti-drug work, said organizations that receive the money should face some form of program oversight.
“Giving the money to [organizations that] give out free needles so they can trade in their dirty ones for seven clean ones is ridiculous,” she said. “We need to take that money and invest it in places that have been here for years and have proven success.”
Mayor Jim Kenney announced in January that the money will be invested in various programs throughout Philadelphia over the course of the next 18 years.
The first set of payments will include $7.5 million for the Kensington Health & Wellness Corridors. This spending will be led by Impact Services and NKCDC.
Proposed programs for the settlement funds include wound care, mobile methadone distribution, home repair, and reviving parks and schools in the community.
Brown is pleased with the spending plans community leaders helped to develop for the city and hopes these programs will help other in the city see Kensington as more than a problem and little more than a dump site
“It’s okay if you’re a contractor and you can’t make it to the dump or you want to save a buck to just go and dump your tires, dump your trash, dump your whatever on Kensington,” he said.
But, with the opioid settlement funds, there is an opportunity to reinvest in the community and its people.
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