Chaos and confusion have followed Kensington encampment clearing, residents and businesses say

When chef Dionicio Jiménez opens the doors of Cantina La Martina on Kensington Avenue, his day begins by cleaning up trash and human feces from the sidewalk or disposing of the occasional mattress where people have been sleeping around his restaurant.

He and his wife, co-owner Mariangeli Alicea Saez, were hopeful about Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s plan to clean up Kensington, where they opened their restaurant in 2022.

But since last month’s closure of a homeless encampment half a mile north, problems have intensified near SEPTA’s Somerset Station and cost them business. The volume of open-air drug use around their restaurant has dramatically increased, crowds loiter around the clock, and weekly sales have fallen up to 60% in the last month, the couple said.

“We were finally reaching a point where one could feel the progress, see the difference,” Jiménez, 48, said in Spanish. “Then the clean-up began with what seems like no concrete action plan.”

Parker unveiled a five-phase strategy in April to root out Kensington’s heavy narcotics trade and stabilize the neighborhood. No timeline was set for when each phase would begin or end, and officials claimed the encampment closure was not part of the plan’s rollout. But that has been little solace to people dealing with the latest wave of displacement.

Longtime residents and business owners have seen countless encampment closures and drug corner busts that did little more than shuffle Kensington’s problems around the neighborhood. And the result is a cycle of short-lived reprieves, where one block’s peace spells another block’s chaos.

Between Somerset and Allegheny on Kensington Avenue, the fallout from the latest shutdown has left many community leaders questioning the administration’s ability to deliver on its long-term stabilization plan — or whether the policing alone will provide meaningful relief while waiting for the city to expand its addiction treatment infrastructure.

Police said Thursday that they would deploy dozens of new police officers to the neighborhood and begin stricter enforcement of drug laws. Deputy Commissioner Pedro Rosario, the police commander overseeing the Kensington plan, acknowledged that displacement had been a significant if expected challenge over the last month, and urged residents to have patience.

“It’s only been a month,” he said. “Is it as quick as some people would hope it would be? No. The displacement is a challenge everyday. But I don’t want to let this community down and say we’re not responding to their concerns.”

Frustration over the last month has been compounded by what business owners, community leaders, and longtime residents called a lack of communication from City Hall. Parker name-dropped the James Beard-nominated Cantina La Martina owners in her inaugural budget address in March, citing Jiménez and Saez as an inspiration and saying “their resilience is what we’re fighting for in Kensington.”

The New Kensington Community Development Corporation, Impact Services, and other nonprofit leaders told The Inquirer that they’ve been left in the dark about the plan, receiving little communication from the administration.

“I don’t think they were as prepared as they could have been,” said Dianne Hoffmann, 61, the executive director of Mother of Mercy House, a Christian nonprofit that serves the neighborhood. “I would think someone would call or stop by, or even have a meeting of the nonprofits that are really making a difference.”

Sharon Gallagher, a spokesperson for the Managing Director’s Office, said that the administration has partnered with organizations in Kensington and that expectations for overnight change are unrealistic.

Along the 3000 and 3100 blocks of Kensington Avenue, metal bicycle racks now line the sidewalk where tents once sat and people openly used drugs in front of mostly vacant storefronts. The increased police activity in the area has been a welcomed sight for the remaining business owners in the epicenter of the open-air market.

“There is less garbage and more protection,” mini-market operator Javier Núñez said in Spanish. “I don’t know where they all went, but it’s much quieter. I don’t have to deal with a crowd of people lying around outside and a storefront as dirty as it was before.”

On the immediate blocks east and west of the Avenue, however, narcotics activity has pressed into the residential streets, with dealers handing out free samples to draw their customer base to new locations. At McPherson Square — long a battleground for community control over the neighborhood — crowds have also swelled in recent weeks.

“[The city] is saying they were going to take them and fix the area, but they have nowhere to go,” said Anna, a business owner in the area who asked that her last name and business name be withheld for fear of retaliation. “No one has come to tell us anything. But it doesn’t even make us feel bad, because we are used to not being given any explanation.”

Meanwhile, fears over displacement have accelerated in nearby neighborhoods, with many bracing for another wave as more police descend on the Avenue. Reports of new homeless encampments spiked in Port Richmond, Fishtown, and East Kensington last month, according to city 311 data.

At a recent community meeting in the Harrowgate section of Kensington, Shannon Farrell, president of the area’s civic association, said that neighbors expected the displacement to be worse than it’s been so far, but she worried about people being spread out and accessing fewer resources, and turf wars breaking out between dealers.

Despite the visible disorder, gun violence has plummeted citywide, including in the police district that covers Kensington. Since January, homicides are down 31% and shootings 51% compared with the same period last year, according to police data. Rosario said police have been trying to capitalize on those gains while also preventing new encampments before they start.

“I can’t just take people off the street for no given reason,” he said. “There’s a process to everything. We’re engaging. We’ve been trying to hit them with as many resources as we can.”

Although there’s been no dramatic increase in arrests, Rosario last month said increased enforcement in Kensington began when Parker took office, with officers stopping more people for long-overlooked offenses such as drug paraphernalia and public drug use. For people struggling in addiction, it has amounted to months of harassment with no clear alternatives except to keep shifting around the neighborhood.

Kirsten Callahan, 29, sat at McPherson Square last week with a growing crowd of people in addiction who had been dispersed by the encampment closure. She said the latest shuffling has left her and her friends feeling “like cattle.”

“It feels dehumanizing,” Callahan said, surrounded by a few close friends who look out for each other. “It feels like living in the dark, living day to day by ear.”

Callahan and her friends try to find quiet places where they won’t bother nearby families, children, and business owners. “If you are a little bit better than you were the day before,” she tells herself, “life will move in the right direction.”

Back at the Cantina, news that more officers were being dispatched to the neighborhood did little to restore hope for Jiménez and Saez.

After weeks of complaining about the displacement and poor communication, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada and Rosario met the owners two weeks ago and urged patience. Lozada, whose district includes much of Kensington, said Thursday that she recognized the impact of the encampment closure, and said city outreach workers were working daily to connect people who had been displaced. Rosario called the Somerset area “the bane of his existence” at the moment, but promised change was coming.

“I anticipate it to get a little worse before it will get better,” he said of the next phase.

Saez faulted the Parker administration for not consulting with more community leaders who have been on the ground for years. She and Jiménez knew what they were getting into opening their business under the El. They’ve weathered high insurance premiums and vendor cancellations over public safety concerns in the neighborhood. Within the last month, convincing customers to come back has been harder than ever.

“It feels hopeless,” Saez said. “This is not about bringing more police to the streets. And this is not about bringing more sanitation trucks to clean the streets. That’s just a small part of the problem. This is about how are you going to heal the crisis of drug abuse, homelessness.”

Staff writers Anna Orso, Ellie Rushing, and Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.