Complaints about addiction services in Manayunk show widening tensions over opioid epidemic in Philly

An inspector from the city Department of Licensing and Inspections paid a surprise visit on a recent afternoon to Unity Recovery, a Manayunk-based organization that supports people in addiction.

The inspector told Unity staffers he was there to investigate a report that the nonprofit was illegally operating a syringe exchange.

Days later, an inspector from the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs visited Unity to follow up on another complaint. Unity had been accused of using state funds to distribute syringes. (Local officials in Philadelphia permit the distribution of sterile syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and other blood-borne diseases, but the practice is not legal statewide.)

Staff say both complaints were unfounded, adding that the organization does not distribute syringes from its Manayunk location. The city inspector told staff he would not escalate the complaint, and state officials said their visit was simply a compliance check.

But Unity staff couldn’t help but see the back-to-back visits as a sign of escalating tensions around their work in Manayunk. This type of regulatory scrutiny is new, leaders say.

The inspections come at an inflection point for efforts to reduce the harmful consequences of opioid addiction in Philadelphia’s ongoing drug epidemic. Overdose death tolls continue to reach new highs each year, but critics say newly elected Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is focused more on law-and-order concerns than harm reduction. She has proposed pulling back city funding for syringe exchanges.

Much of the new administration’s attention has been on Kensington, the neighborhood where an open-air drug market has become the face of the city’s opioid crisis. Now, staff at Unity say their recent experiences show how the tensions around the epidemic — and the debate around how to solve it — reverberates across the city.

It’s unclear who prompted the inspections; L&I did not return requests for comment and the state declined to say who entered the complaint. But for months, Unity staff say, business leaders in the community have blamed them for increasingly visible homelessness and drug use in the area.

“They think we’re the sole cause of anybody experiencing homelessness or engaging in public drug use or having mental health concerns,” said Robert Ashford, Unity’s executive director.

» READ MORE: Powerful synthetic opioids stronger than fentanyl were found in several overdose deaths in Philly

Su-Shan Lai, who owns a hair salon in the neighborhood, said the business community is concerned about the nonprofit’s operations in a neighborhood not typically known for drug use. Lai sits on the board of the Manayunk Development Corporation, a local business organization that recently has been working to help the neighborhood bounce back from the economic trials of the COVID-19 pandemic and a devastating flood in 2021. She added that no one on the board knows where the complaints to the city and state originated.

“They’re trying to make sure those in the community feel safe, [after] a bunch of things that have hurt us economically,” she told The Inquirer, adding that she personally supports Unity’s mission but that other business owners worry about its presence. “A lot of that worry comes from a lack of education around recovery.”

Unity runs a community drop-in center on Manayunk’s Gay Street, plus a coffee shop, eateries, and a sober bar. It also has a yoga studio, which was the first Unity entity to open in the neighborhood in 2019 and geared toward people in recovery from addiction. The organization also has locations in Pittsburgh and Texas, and engages in harm reduction outreach, including syringe distribution, around Philadelphia.

Mike Clemson, 33, grew up in Manayunk and has been homeless there for the last 18 months. Stopping in at Unity has provided him with a welcome stability during a chaotic time in his life.

“Most of the people out here don’t really know where to start — they lost everything, and along the way you lose more, and then you end up sitting on the sidewalk every day,” he said.

More people have been living rough in the neighborhood in recent years, a consequence of the economic and social damage of the pandemic, says Ashford, Unity’s executive director.

The first sign of rising tensions between Unity and local business owners emerged at a July 2023 meeting among leaders of the local business community. There, members of the Manayunk Development Corporation questioned Unity’s presence on Gay Street and said they believed the organization was attracting people in addiction to the block, according to meeting minutes provided to The Inquirer by Ashford.

Kelly Maguire, who owns Unity’s building, told members that those issues were present before Unity began operations in the neighborhood in 2019.

Still, she acknowledged business owners’ concerns: “I do want to have a discussion on how we can address public safety, neighborhood appearance, and keep in mind people who are in crisis,” she said at the meeting.

They think we’re the sole cause of anybody experiencing homelessness or engaging in public drug use or having mental health concerns.

Pointing to the sight of discarded syringes littering the streets around the neighborhood, business owners in October 2023 asked Unity whether it could stop distributing sterile syringes in Manayunk. The organization agreed. (The two dozen people Unity serves in Manayunk are largely not injection drug users.)

Then Unity’s leader, Ashford, received an email from business owners asking whether he had been distributing syringes again. The email noted they had seen more people “setting up camp” in the neighborhood and were “trying to understand the causes of the behaviors we’re seeing.”

Ashford replied that he was not distributing syringes in the area.

Communication on both sides has “not been perfect,” said Lai, the local salon owner. Since more visible drug use is relatively new in Manayunk, she said, many business owners are unsure how to react.

Ashford feels that tensions are only increasing. Recently, he said, staff members have been yelled at on the street by people who see them wearing Unity T-shirts.

“We’re the only organization in this part of Philadelphia trying to help people,” said Ashford, who is in recovery himself. “We’re tired of being harassed by organizations that would rather just not see what the reality of the human existence is.”

In the tensions around Unity’s operations, Ashford sees a mirror of attempts in Kensington to shut down or limit the operations of harm reduction organizations.

City councilmember Quetcy Lozada recently intervened to end a harm reduction organization’s lease of a storefront on Kensington Avenue and has suggested she wants to pull funding entirely for the public health organization that runs the city’s largest syringe exchange.

The Manayunk Development Corporation has spoken with other business districts around the city about how they address safety issues in their neighborhoods, Lai said, rebutting Ashford’s concern that local leaders have consulted Kensington politicians on how to replicate efforts to push out harm reduction organizations.

Meanwhile, clients at Unity say that the community center on Gay Street has been a lifeline for people living rough in the neighborhood — many of whom, such as Clemson, are longtime residents themselves.

To those who complain about Unity’s presence in the neighborhood, he said: “What are we really harming? What do we actually do to their appearance?”

» READ MORE: Mayor Parker’s administration boosts Kensington outreach, police presence ahead of encampment clearing