It’s going to take more than $20 million to help the people of Kensington | Editorial

The city’s plan to steer millions of dollars to Kensington to combat the opioid crisis is a much-needed welcome start. But without a comprehensive plan to address the rampant open-air drug markets and homelessness lining the main business corridor there, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to distribute $20 million to community groups in Kensington to fund a variety of efforts, including overdose prevention, home repairs, and improvements to parks and schools.

The money is part of the $200 million Philadelphia expects to receive over 18 years as part of a national settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distribution firms that helped fuel the opioid crisis.

Overall, Pennsylvania expects to receive $1.6 billion as part of the settlement negotiated by then-Attorney General (and now Gov.-elect) Josh Shapiro.

To their credit, Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner initially balked at the city’s portion of the settlement, given the scale of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, which has resulted in more than 1,100 deaths annually since 2017.

Philadelphia is ground zero in the state’s opioid crisis and should receive more funding. But the city ultimately went along with the settlement, figuring it was better than nothing.

» READ MORE: To Josh Shapiro: Supervised injection sites save lives | Expert Opinion

The challenge now is to not waste the opportunity — or the money. For far too long, the city has allowed Kensington to devolve into an infamous drug bazaar.

The scene along the main business corridor is dystopian. Homeless encampments line the trash-strewn streets along with used needles, human feces, and vomit. There are scores of people smoking, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing, and stumbling in different states of addiction.

Those unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping sight should google videos of Kensington, as words can’t capture the daily horror. It is an appalling and embarrassing blot on the city that no leader should accept.

Kensington is the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast. It has been described as the Walmart of heroin. People travel from all over to buy and sell cheap drugs in what has grown into a $1 billion-a-year business.

Drug dealers operate in plain sight on at least 80 different locations within a 1.9-mile stretch identified by police. Imagine having 80 Starbucks within two miles of one another. That’s Kensington, except instead of caffeine, customers stream in for cheap heroin.

In turn, heroin users and sex workers operate in broad daylight. Amid the drugs, crime, and frequent shootings is a working-class neighborhood where residents who just want to live, work, and play, must instead try to survive.

Fear and trauma are constants for many residents who are prisoners in their own homes.

East Tusculum Street, the tiny rowhome block off Kensington Avenue where the fictional Rocky Balboa first lived in the 1976 movie, endured 15 shootings, including six homicides, in 2021.

» READ MORE: 100 bullets fired Friday. 9 people shot Saturday. That’s two days in Kensington.

A 7-year-old Kensington girl was recently struck by a stray bullet while sitting in her great-grandmother’s house. In November, more than 100 bullets were fired in a double shooting on Frankford Avenue. The next day, nine people were injured in a mass shooting near Allegheny Avenue. It barely caused a ripple among city leaders.

Many residents welcome the funding but want the city to crack down on the brazen drug dealing that is the source of the addiction, homelessness, crime, and gun violence plaguing the neighborhood.

“If the drug dealers are not here then the drug addicts won’t be here,” Darlene Burton, a Kensington resident and community activist, told the Editorial Board. “You have to cut off the head of the snake.”

Burton has one hope: that children will be able to play outside again. City leaders should have the same goal.

Past efforts to clamp down on drug dealing and homelessness have been successful, but short-lived. In 1998, then-Police Commissioner John Timoney launched Operation Sunrise, a major effort designed to retake control of Kensington’s streets.

In 2017, the city cleared a large heroin encampment that existed for years in a gulch along the Kensington rail line. In 2021, the city cleared two homeless encampments along Kensington Avenue.

The problem may seem intractable but cannot be ignored. There needs to be a comprehensive and sustained approach to stop the drug dealing and help those who are battling addiction and homelessness.

The city must own it.