Current plans to ‘fix’ Kensington won’t work. Here is what will.

I have lived across the street from McPherson Square in Kensington for more than 20 years. I’ve also spent 25 years developing, evaluating, and implementing ideas of how to help my neighborhood, and have worked on almost every major problem it’s facing.

In that time, I’ve seen the same thing happen over and over: When the neighborhood is in the spotlight, people in power enact plans to displace the unhoused, crime, and drug use taking place, without addressing the root problems of poverty, disinvestment, and racism.

So after a period of time — usually around five or six years — all the problems of Kensington return.

Now, in 2024, with a new administration and new faces on City Council, we’re about to embark on a new cycle of ideas and proposals to “fix” Kensington.

In recent weeks, the latest plans have begun to take shape, and include clearing unhoused encampments and arresting people using drugs on the street.

Some of these measures may temporarily displace the problems. But unless we can work together to find a plan to tackle the root causes of Kensington’s problems, in a few years we could be facing another danger brought on by new obstacles.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The city has a chance to forge a new path if it can learn from its past mistakes.

The last major attempt to “fix” Kensington came in April 2017, when Mehmet Oz visited the encampments at “El Campamento,” alongside the Conrail railroad tracks. There was an explosion of national attention on Kensington, and a few months later, the camps were cleared out.

But with no clear path toward solving the actual issues that led to the camps, many relocated to underpasses along Lehigh Avenue, to the El stop at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, and to McPherson Square Park. The librarians at the McPherson Square Branch of the public library became trained in administering the overdose antidote Narcan, exemplifying the intersections of suffering between children, families, and addiction. The situation for residents became even more untenable than ever, and over the next year, the city declared a citywide emergency and launched major cleaning and policing efforts.

These efforts pledged to include resident input, so I reached out to the city’s managing director spearheading the effort to ask if I could assist. I also expressed my skepticism about the effort, born from years of witnessing countless programs and initiatives come and go in the area.

He responded right away, saying the first two weeks were earmarked to work with the community to define what “fixing” Kensington should look like.

Two weeks later, after the defined community engagement period had ended, without hearing from him again, I wrote back. “As I said in my original email I can only assume that the usual players have been engaged in a similar process to ones in the past so that similar results can be achieved. I will save this thread for 6-7 years from now when the next initiative is launched after the success of this one.”

Here we are, exactly as I predicted: six to seven years later, attempting to recover from the failed efforts of 2017-2018, and about to launch a new effort.

When it comes to Kensington, the new administration has promised to succeed where those in the past have failed.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has suggested cutting nearly $1 million in funding for Prevention Point, an organization that provides sterile syringes to people who use drugs. City Council has enacted a curfew, and sent more police and outreach workers to the neighborhood, informing people about housing and treatment options, and posting notices letting people know they plan to clear unhoused encampments.

Many in our community are excited for these coming “successes” because we are all so exhausted and desperately deserve change. But these efforts will only reduce the chaos to a level that is less embarrassing for the city so national attention will dissipate.

Without a greater plan, the community will return to its previous status: a poor, divested neighborhood quietly being mined for the resources that do exist here — particularly, real estate.

What’s more, many of the newly proposed “solutions” to Kensington have been tried already.

Yet, unlike in 2017 when Oz came to town, we face different challenges, which present new obstacles. They include:

Without clear plans from the city, state, and federal governments that are cocreated with the community to identify resources for the long term, Kensington will be turned over to privatization and the free market, neither of which have ever been kind to people of color and those with limited means.

As a consequence, Kensington residents already face another danger, which hasn’t been discussed nearly enough: displacement through gentrification.

The last wave of “progress” in 2017-2018 saw massive investment by prospectors and developers, who are now giddy with the opportunity of finally seeing their investments come to fruition.

Any effort to “fix” Kensington should not just be about eliminating the drug economy or ending Kensington as a containment strategy for the city; it should be about preserving a community.

While we are focused on what we will be told are the solutions to clearing the streets, we also should expect answers as to how the estimated $1 billion drug economy — which permeates all corners of the community — will be replaced, what the workforce development efforts will entail, how the improvements to education will look, and when the hundreds of millions of funding for housing stability will arrive.

If none of these answers exist, the second stage of displacement — this time of long-term residents — is already underway.

Without a greater plan that deals with the core causes of how we got here in Kensington, after the initial “successes” from cleaning, curfews, and policing are celebrated, the crime, drugs, and encampments — which relocated for a time — will return. And without a greater plan to address the long-term needs of residents that’s cocreated with the Kensington community, my neighbors and I could be cheering our own demise.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As plans are designed for Kensington, the city can — for the first time — connect its resources to a transparent, robust, and engaged community network.

As a direct result of the failures of the past, a stronger civil society has emerged in Kensington. Decision-makers can plug into a participatory framework that centers meaningful engagement and cocreation with the community. For the first time, the city can really work with us, rather than simply informing, placating, and, in the end, manipulating us as they have in the past.

We also have an abundance of organizations that operate through trauma-informed frameworks. We have a police commissioner who is well-versed and committed to these principles, a deputy police commissioner who is well-respected by the community, and a mayor espousing transparent community participation. What better time to make good on the promise that solutions to our most complex problems can be cocreated by those most impacted by the outcomes and that community participation is the engine that drives sustainable, positive change?

I recently met with a newly appointed cabinet-level city official to discuss Kensington, and at the end of the meeting, they said: Please, just remember we just got here, so all I ask is for some grace.

I reminded them that I am a resident now entering the fourth plan to “fix Kensington” over the last 20-plus years, amounting to an entire generation for this community. And each time a new plan arrives, someone asks me and my neighbors to please be patient and give them time and grace. I responded: If you accept my grace, you have to accept my advice.

I think grace for advice is a fair deal for all residents who have been eager to participate in a cocreated process so we can sustainably address Kensington’s challenges, together.

Bill McKinney is a Kensington resident and the executive director of New Kensington Community Development Corp.